The ongoing crisis within the Liberal party has forced Leader Stephane Dion to cancel a trip to the Arctic.
Dion -- who hasn't made a public appearance yet this week -- was to travel Wednesday night to the North. He was to spend three days in Yellowknife and make some stops in Nunavut.
However, the party announced the trip had been cancelled.
"The Liberals are now dealing with some eruptions in Quebec that are based on the poor results they had in the Quebec byelections a couple of weeks ago," Jane Taber, senior political writer with The Globe and Mail and co-host of CTV's Question Period, told Canada AM on Thursday.
"This turmoil is just keeping Stephane Dion focused and in his office in Ottawa. He's planning a shuffle of his critics and he's trying to deal with this situation in Quebec by bringing in more Quebecers into top positions in his party and his office.
"So this would be a time when they are vulnerable, and perhaps the prime minister is thinking they should go now."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a news conference in the National Press Theatre on Wednesday, the first there since he came to power in early 2006.
Harper said if the opposition parties pass his Conservative government's throne speech, to be delivered on Oct. 16, they should consider themselves bound to support the government's overall legislative agenda.
He said more bills will be made matters of confidence, increasing the number of opportunities for his government to fall and an election to be triggered.
Canadians last went to the polls on Jan. 23, 2006. Harper said he wants to govern until October 2009 -- an election date set out in a law enacted this spring.
"Obviously, if we don't get approval, the opposition will force an election. That's not my preferred course of action, but if they force that, we'll be ready for it," Harper said.
"It's not a matter of threats. They have to fish or cut bait."
NDP Leader Jack Layton has said his party will not support the throne speech. Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe has laid out five conditions for throne speech support that the Tories would find unpalatable.
However, all three opposition parties must vote down the throne speech to trigger the government's collapse.
The Liberals want an early 2009 exit date from Canada's combat role in Afghanistan, the resurrection of clean-air legislation that died in the last session of Parliament, and an anti-poverty plan.
Harper sounded Wednesday like he wasn't amenable to an early Afghanistan withdrawal.
"... We think we have a moral responsibility there. It's not just a matter of playing to the polls," he said.
Harper talked earlier this year about parliamentary consensus on the mission's extension. Canada's combat role, unless renewed, will end in February 2009.
"In retrospect, the choice of the word 'consensus' was wrong. I didn't mean to imply that we would get every party on side," he said. "I simply meant to say that the government can't obviously assure a majority vote on its own. We have to have the support of some members of the opposition to get a majority vote in favour of deployment."
The prime minister said he was prepared to fight an election over the issue.
"When it comes to matters of global security or leadership of a military deployment, I believe strongly that anyone who wants to possess the office of prime minister has to be prepared to make decisions based upon the long-term best interests of the country; based upon whether we fulfil our responsibilities to the poor people of Kandahar, whose security we have accepted to take care of at least in a transition period," he said.
Hopefully any future Parliamentary debate will look at more than whether Canadian troops should stay or go, Harper said.
