A couple walks up to a polling station in Saanich-Gulf Islands, near Sidney, B.C., to vote in the federal election on Oct. 14, 2008.Deddeda Stemler
The Conservatives have warned a fall election could be possible after Liberal Senators killed off - at least temporarily - several contentious clauses that the Conservative government had stuffed into an omnibus budget bill.
"Let's dance," Conservative Senator Doug Finley said Thursday after Bill C-9, a mammoth 883-page piece of legislation, was chopped down by the Liberals and one Progressive Conservative at a meeting of the Senate finance committee.
The senators voted against clauses that would open overseas mail delivery to privatization, alter environmental assessment, and facilitate the selloff of the power division of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
That effectively removed them from the bill before it goes to a final vote in the Senate on Tuesday.
If Conservative senators are able to restore the excised sections of the bill and pass it unamended - as seems likely - then it will be given royal assent and everyone will go home for the summer, said Mr. Finley.
But if the Senate passes the bill with some parts missing, he said, it will go back to the House of Commons and "it may very well precipitate an election."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman nevertheless played down threats of an election. "The Prime Minister is not looking to call an election this fall," Dimitri Soudas said. "And Canadians don't want one either."
Liberal senators. he added, "should stop delaying passage of Canada's Economic Action Plan."
Mr. Finley, who is also his party's campaign director, told The Globe and Mail that it is hard to imagine a better campaign issue than the budget.
"The Liberals between them in the Senate and the Commons have managed to cause this bill to be so amended, with some very key provisions on AECL, on speeding up environmental assessment, and a number of issues like that [removed]" he said, adding that the delay will hold up payments to people who are waiting for money from the federal government.
"I think there's more than enough issues here to run an election on, and I'm ready," Mr. Finley said. "I've got buses, I've got planes, I've got a war room, I've got advertising already in the can. We are constantly at work on our policy and platform. I've got a tour two-thirds planned."
The government included the non-budgetary matters in the legislation gambling, correctly, that Liberal MPs would allow it to pass in the House of Commons rather than prompt an election that no party wants. Budget bills are, by their nature, confidence matters.
The New Democrats had tried to break apart the bill while it was still in the House of Commons. The Liberals, perhaps after taking a hard look at their own poll numbers, made sure enough of their members didn't vote to ensure the bill's passage.
But the Senate is not a confidence chamber and the Liberal senators, with the help of the remaining independents, did not fear that they would spark a vote.
"I think we made a very important statement and this was a very important thing for us to do," Liberal Senator James Cowan said.
The bill, Mr. Cowan said, was just too big to allow for proper consideration.
"We were trying to make a statement that this is the wrong way to do the public's business, this is the wrong way to deal with the budget."
Senator Lowell Murray, who as a Progressive Conservative sits outside the government caucus, had moved several weeks ago that the bill be divided into five parts. The Conservatives are one member short of a majority but managed to get enough of their members into the Red Chamber to ensure that move was defeated.
It is also unlikely that the Liberals will be able to muster enough of their members next week to prevent the Conservatives from patching the bill back together.
But many speak passionately about the decision to amend the legislation and remove the non-budgetary clauses.
"The fact is that these matters that have been taken out of the bill have absolutely nothing to do with the budget," said Liberal Senator George Baker.
"If things hopefully play out the way they should, those amendments would stand."
"We were trying to make a statement that this is the wrong way to do the public's business, this is the wrong way to deal with the budget," he said. "This is not the first government nor the last government that will bring in an omnibus bill but this is most egregious example that I know of a budget implementation bill where they lumped in all kinds of things that may be important but had nothing to do with the budget."
The Senate, he said, was saying that the measures needed to be dealt with separately and politicians needed a chance to vote on them separately.
Senator Lowell Murray, who as a Progressive Conservative sits outside the government caucus, had moved several weeks ago that the bill be divided into five parts. He proposed an amendment to the clause regarding AECL that would have given the matter more time for consideration. When that was rejected by the Conservative members, Mr. Murray said he would have to vote against the clause "more in sorrow than in anger."
And so it went with all of the other controversial clauses. Liberals moved amendments. The Conservatives rejected them. And the clause was voted down.
The Liberals and the independents combined hold the barest of majorities in the Red Chamber so they could, in theory, pass the bill in its current form when it goes to a vote next week.
But the Liberals have not been able to get enough bodies in the seats to stop the Conservatives from pushing the bill through to the committee stage. So it is unlikely that they will be able to muster the numbers next week.