Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved swiftly Wednesday night to nail down a meeting with newly minted Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff in an effort to prevent his government from being defeated over its coming budget.
Sources said Mr. Harper phoned Mr. Ignatieff within hours of the Liberal Leader's warning that the Conservatives will be defeated if the Prime Minister doesn't shelve partisan attacks or if he fails to compromise on the budget. Mr. Harper phoned to congratulate Mr. Ignatieff on his acclamation to the party's leadership and invited him to a get-together. A spokesperson for Mr. Ignatieff said the leader neither accepted nor declined the offer.
Mr. Ignatieff later told the CBC that Mr. Harper asked to meet about the budget and parliamentary business, and that he'd be willing to meet with the Prime Minister.
"I made it clear I don't want to get into secret negotiations or backdoor deals," Mr. Ignatieff said.
"I'm there to listen to the Prime Minister because he's the Prime Minister of Canada. And then we'll decide what we have to do from there."
Mr. Ignatieff said earlier that he was open to supporting the government if the budget is acceptable, potentially scuttling the plans of a Liberal-NDP coalition to take the reins of power. But he adopted a substantially more forceful tone than his predecessor, Stéphane Dion, maintaining that the coalition option is still viable while also criticizing the Prime Minister for raising national tensions in a fall economic statement that, among other things, proposed to remove voter subsidies from political parties.
“I am prepared to vote non-confidence in this government. And I am prepared to enter into a coalition government with our partners if that is what the Governor-General asks me to do,” Mr. Ignatieff said.
“But I also made it clear to the caucus this morning that no party can have the confidence of the country if it decides to vote now against a budget it hasn't even read.”
While Mr. Harper was seeking a meeting, other Conservatives criticized Mr. Ignatieff. On Tuesday, Conservative campaign manager Doug Finley sent out “emergency” fundraising letters calling Mr. Ignatieff's acclamation a “stunning and unprecedented demonstration of Liberal contempt for our democratic rights.”
When asked how the government can ask for co-operation from a leader it deems illegitimate, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said it was an internal matter for the Liberals.
When the Liberals prevented the defeat of the Conservatives last spring by sitting on their hands through repeated confidence votes, the Conservatives mocked them in the House of Commons.
But Mr. MacKay said he didn't envision a repeat of those tactics.
“We're in a very different circumstance today as a country,” he said. “The global economic crisis has everyone, I think, re-examining priorities.”
Mr. Ignatieff was acclaimed during a caucus meeting and a consultation among party officials, defeated candidates and other Liberals. He is now considered the interim leader, and will be confirmed at the party's convention in May.
His ascension was welcomed by Liberal MPs, who suffered through a recent election in which the party posted one of its worst results in history. Mr. Ignatieff acknowledged he has much work to do to rebuild the institution, particularly in rural Canada and the West.
“I want us to reach out and hope that Western Canadians forgive and forget, to be very blunt, some of the errors that the party has made in the past.”
Mr. Ignatieff took a standoffish approach to meeting Mr. Harper, first suggesting he has no plans to negotiate with the Prime Minister, but ultimately leaving the door open.
“I think that after having lost the confidence of the House, after having triggered a national crisis, after having raised tensions between groups in Canada, it's not up to me to reach out a hand. It's more up to the Prime Minister,” he said.
