OTTAWA - Conservatives are playing down the prospect of a fall election, despite threats of a snap vote from the party's national campaign director.
Election speculation, never entirely muted in a minority parliament, went into hyper drive Thursday after opposition members of the Senate finance committee voted to strip a number of controversial measures out of the government's massive budget implementation bill.
The move prompted Tory Senator Doug Finley, the party's head campaign honcho, to warn that Conservatives are ready to plunge into an election if the budget bill is revised.
However, a spokesman for the prime minister immediately let it be known that Stephen Harper "isn't looking to call an election this fall."
And Harper backed that up Friday by bolstering Conservative ranks in the Senate, signalling that he'd rather fight to save the budget bill rather than call an election over it.
Harper appointed former Tory candidate Salma Ataullahjan to fill the one Senate vacancy, bringing the Tories to 52 seats in the 105-seat chamber -- just shy of an absolute majority.
The full Senate will vote Monday or Tuesday on the finance committee's revisions to the budget bill.
With all but two Tory senators expected to turn out for the vote, the stripped out provisions of the bill could be reinstated if only three Liberals miss the vote or any of the four independent senators side with the government.
NDP Leader Jack Layton called on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff Friday to order all his senators to show up for the vote. He urged Liberal senators to show the courage of their convictions -- unlike Liberal MPs who complained bitterly about myriad non-budgetary measures larded into the budget bill but who did not show up in sufficient numbers to defeat it in the House of Commons.
"If (senators) can't show up for a critical vote like this, what the heck are they doing?" Layton said in an interview.
He also challenged Harper to recall the Commons to urgently revisit the budget bill should the full Senate refuse to reinstate the axed provisions.
Layton dismissed Finley's threat of an election over the yanked provisions of the bill, which include measures to privatize Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and Canada Post's overseas mail operations, to diminish the scope of federal environmental assessments and apply the harmonized sales tax to financial services.
Layton doubted Harper would want to fight an election over "gutting our environmental laws" or selling off public assets or imposing the unpopular HST on financial services in B.C. and Ontario.
However, Tory insiders said the only thing that might push Harper into a fall election would be if the opposition successfully carved up his budget bill -- and most doubt it will come to that. Beyond that, they insisted Harper genuinely doesn't want a fall federal election.
"I don't think he wants an election at this point in time. I don't think the country wants one. I think he thinks . . . that when he governs and focuses on governing, he does pretty well," said Tory strategist Tim Powers.
Still, some opposition strategists saw Finley's warning as the Tories looking for an excuse to call an election when polls suggest they've opened up as much as an 11-point lead over the sagging Liberals.
They speculate that Harper would prefer to get an election out of the way before the next austerity budget, which promises to contain a host of painful and likely unpopular spending cuts, and before another potential global economic slump. Moreover, they suggest Harper doesn't want to give Liberals more time to pull themselves together or possibly find a new leader.
Political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Harper, said forcing an election that might well return another minority, possibly with fewer seats, would be a setback for the prime minister. That would leave Harper in a weaker position to introduce a tough budget next winter or grapple with changing economic conditions.
As for the argument Harper doesn't want to give Liberals time to recover lost ground, Flanagan said: "The evidence is, thus far, no matter how much time they have, they really can't get it together."
The only reason, in Flanagan's view, that Harper would call an election is if he had a very good chance of finally winning a majority. And polls consistently suggest that prize remains out of Harper's grasp.
"If it looked good for a majority, I would say let's roll the dice."
"But if it continues to look borderline for a majority, I think I'd say, 'Gee, I'm the prime minister, I've got my own limousine, I've got a jet, a nice place to live . . . I'm having an impact on the country in a kind of a steady, drip, drip, drip sort of way. Do I want to throw that all away on a very uncertain prospect of winning a majority?"'
