News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved yesterday to give his government a new parliamentary start and a fresh legislative agenda, setting the stage for a vote on the Conservatives' survival.

MPs will return to Ottawa one month later than scheduled after Mr. Harper asked Governor-General Michaëlle Jean yesterday to end the current session of Parliament and begin a new one Oct. 16. The government will then unveil a new Speech from the Throne to reinvigorate an agenda that critics say has run its course.

The vote on the Throne Speech is considered a confidence vote and could plunge the country into a fall election if all three opposition parties oppose it.

"It's time to launch the next phase of our mandate," Mr. Harper said in a prepared statement. "We delivered on all the major commitments we made to Canadians during the 2006 election."

Ending the session means that all legislation that has not been passed - except for private members' bills - will die and require reintroduction if the Tories want to push ahead with them. That would include many of the government's key bills: proposals to terminate the long-gun registry, two Senate reform bills, justice bills that would increase penalties for repeat offenders and impose tighter bail conditions and a bill extending the Human Rights Act to native reserves.

Other bills that are irking the government - such as its own Clean Air Act, which was dramatically altered by the opposition - would also die.

Delaying the return of Parliament until Oct. 16 also means MPs and their staff will be available to work on the campaigns for the Newfoundland and Ontario provincial elections on Oct. 9 and 10, respectively.

Federal Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion set a high bar for his party's support, insisting the government must pledge there will be no extension of the military mission in Kandahar, that it allow a vote on the amended clean-air bill and that it bring forward proposals for the ailing manufacturing sector and for addressing poverty. "We cannot stand up in the house and vote for a Throne Speech that we consider detrimental for the Canadian people and against the honour of Canada," Mr. Dion said in an interview.

NDP Leader Jack Layton called the decision to prorogue the session a waste of time. "Students have gone back to class. Working families are back from vacation. Why is Stephen Harper locking MPs out?" he asked in a statement.

Mr. Layton was travelling yesterday and could not be reached, but a party official said the NDP would take some time before deciding whether to present a "shopping list" of demands on the government heading into the confidence vote.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said he would support the Throne Speech only if it includes an end date of February, 2009, for the Afghan combat mission. He said it will not be enough for the government to simply promise to put any future military mandate in Afghanistan to a vote in the House. "If they are not clear on Afghanistan ... if they say there will be a vote, that is not sufficient. Everything in the Speech from the Throne requires a vote, so it will not be a revelation to say there will be a vote," Mr. Duceppe said in a television interview.

Mr. Harper's decision comes as the Tories and the Liberals fight it out in the election polls. The most recent survey by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV News found the two parties deadlocked at 33-per-cent support.

Tory House Leader Peter Van Loan said the government will seek to revive most of the bills that will die with the new session, although the heavily amended environmental bill will not be one of them.

With reports from Campbell Clark and Daniel Leblanc