OTTAWA — Stéphane Dion signalled Tuesday that he will try to sidestep a fall election, and might even tell his Liberal MPs to sit out a confidence vote on the Conservative government's agenda.
Although he warned Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the Liberals would make him pay if he used election threats to force them to cave in on a rapid series of parliamentary votes, Mr. Dion said bluntly that he wants to avoid an election. "Yes. We need to take into account the fact that Canadians don't want an election," Mr. Dion told reporters yesterday.
With his Liberals falling seven percentage points behind the Tories in a new opinion poll, Mr. Dion specifically refused to rule out the possibility that his MPs would sit out the confidence vote that will follow Tuesday's Throne Speech, allowing the government to survive.
It means a cat-and-mouse game is set to unfold in Ottawa where Mr. Harper seeks to embarrass the embattled Liberal Leader by forcing him to cave in and accept measures that are unpalatable to his party — casting Mr. Dion as a weak leader.
Mr. Harper said last week that in addition to a confidence vote on the Throne Speech, he will stake the survival of his government on the votes concerning individual pieces of legislation outlined in the speech.
However, by allowing the government to survive on the Throne Speech — which is usually a vague statement of general plans — the Liberals could delay any do-or-die confrontation, possibly for months, until the specific bills are brought to a vote in the Commons.
And if they feel they are being forced into defeating the government, the Liberals hope at least to choose the issue that would trigger an election.
Mr. Dion charged yesterday that Mr. Harper "intends to take Parliament hostage with an interminable suite of fabricated confidence crises.
"… If, through this Throne Speech, we see that the Prime Minister wishes to reduce the Parliament's role to that of a rubber stamp, he alone will be responsible for bringing Canada into an election."
The Liberal Leader's own reasons for trying to avoid an election are obvious.
A new Harris/Decima poll released Tuesday showed that Mr. Harper's Conservatives lead the Liberals, 35 per cent to 28. (The NDP are at 17 per cent, the Green Party at 10 per cent and the Bloc Québécois at 8 per cent.) This while Mr. Dion's hand-picked choice to be the party's national director, Jamie Carroll, is locked in legal negotiations over the terms of his departure. Party officials forced him out in an embarrassing flare-up of in-fighting after the Liberals' humiliating showing in three Quebec by-elections last month.
"It would have been surprising if three weeks of this kind of difficulties would not have any effect on our approval ratings," Mr. Dion admitted.
Yesterday, the Liberal Leader sought to establish a new footing by appointing former Ontario premier and leadership rival Bob Rae as his foreign affairs critic, even though he does not yet hold a seat in the Commons.
Mr. Dion also stripped MP Raymonde Folco of her role as official languages critic — she had told reporters that Mr. Dion was not selling in Quebec and was too old to change his ways — in a modest shadow cabinet shuffle.
Conservatives, meanwhile, scoffed that Mr. Dion has decided to avoid an election because his party is in disarray.
"The Liberals are struggling with a weak leader, thin bench strength and a tarnished brand," said Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow.
With a report from The Canadian Press
105
