OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he has no incentive to engineer his government's defeat and trigger an election during the spring session of Parliament that starts Monday.
After all, Harper told The Canadian Press, there's little imminent prospect of a Conservative majority government.
"What would be the point of an election, especially if it would just result in another minority anyway?'' the prime minister said in an interview.
Harper begins his second year in office with public opinion surveys suggesting he wins high marks for leadership, but his party has actually lost support from the 36 per cent of voter backing it received a year ago on election night.
The prime minister insisted he doesn't pay attention to such matters.
"I'm not concerned about the polls,'' Harper said.
"It was only a little over a year ago that the polls all said we were actually in the 20s and couldn't possibly form a government.''
But his admission that he would fall short of the majority he seeks, should an election be called soon, indicates he's taken more than a fleeting glance at public opinion.
Bruce Anderson, CEO of the Decima Research polling firm, says voters don't like governments that seem obsessed by polls, but they do like governments that are interested in public opinion.
"Right now the Conservatives hold their future success in their own hands,'' said Anderson. "Most Canadians are neither enthusiastic enough about them to guarantee a new or larger mandate, nor disappointed enough to be sure they want to replace them.
"As the party that has the best opportunity to set the agenda, the Conservatives can do more than their opponents to push this consensus one way or the other.''
The Tories took the offensive Sunday with the launch of a TV ad campaign portraying Stephane Dion, the new Liberal leader, as weak and indecisive and questioning his past performance as environment minister.
The Grits took that as a signal that Harper is, in fact, gearing up for a spring vote despite his protests to the contrary. The Conservatives insisted they're just getting ready in case their opponents force a campaign they don't want.
Neutral analysts cite a range of reasons why all four parties in the House of Commons might be wise to avoid an immediate election.
Surveys indicate the Bloc Quebecois has recovered much of the support lost to the Conservatives in the first few months of the new government's mandate. But a spring federal election would likely coincide with a Quebec provincial election. The Parti Quebecois workers who make up much of the organizational muscle for the Bloc would be otherwise engaged in that case.
The New Democrats currently find themselves being squeezed between Dion's Liberals and the Green party, which has shown surprising strength since Elizabeth May was selected as its leader.
Dion has said he's in no rush to bring down the Harper government. He needs to establish a policy platform as well as the sense among voters that he is a prime minister in waiting.
That hasn't stopped some Liberals from pushing for a vote soon. Some Grit MPs believe the party's December leadership convention generated enough excitement and new interest in the Liberals that voters are prepared to re-elect them.
"We've just come off a very successful convention ... and I think Canadians are ready for an election, they're ready for a change of government now,'' Paul Zed, the Liberal MP for Saint John, told the Globe and Mail last week.
But several Liberals suggest privately that Canadians aren't ready to rush their party back into office after the sponsorship scandal.
Harper accuses the opposition parties of playing a "game of chicken'' with each other in attempts to force a snap election.
"Don't they owe it to the Canadian people to explain why we would have an election?'' Harper asked rhetorically during a sit-down interview in his office on Parliament Hill.
While acknowledging that another minority government would be the result of any imminent vote, Harper insisted that he wouldn't call an election even if Conservative polling numbers began to climb.
"We will not be calling one. We will not be forcing one. We will not be engineering one,'' he said.
"Nobody wants one.''
Harper clearly enjoys being prime minister. He spends long hours at the office. He's said to delve deeply into a wide variety of policy issues.
Another minority mandate could lead some in his party to surmise that he is incapable of winning a majority, and that could start the clock ticking on his leadership. Modern Canadian political leaders have generally been given two tries at the ballot box before moving along or being shoved along.
A vote on the budget expected in March will likely represent the first opportunity to bring down the government. While Dion says he has no interest in an early election, senior Liberals also say they are unlikely to vote in favour of the budget.
"Given this government's track record, including the hocus pocus that was in the last budget and all of the broken promises and, in some cases, outright lies that we've seen since then, I would think Liberals would be hard-pressed to find a budget that would be satisfactory,'' said Ralph Goodale, the Liberal House leader.
Harper was incredulous at the Liberals' position.
"It's up to the Opposition to explain why, two months before they've seen a budget, they're talking about defeating it,'' Harper said.
"Don't they owe it to the Canadian public to first see what's in a budget before they would decide whether or not they should vote for it?''
The Liberals alone could not bring down the government. The Conservatives could survive a confidence vote if their 125 members teamed up with the New Democrats, who have 29 seats in the Commons, or with the Bloc Quebecois and its 51 MPs.
"The responsible thing is to actually read the budget and decide whether it actually warrants the cost and expense of forcing Canadians back to the polls again,'' said Harper.
The prime minister is banking on a solid performance by his party in the Commons this spring to convince voters that the Conservatives are on the right track.
"Our objective is to govern well, to make sure that people see the real results of the things we're doing for them,'' Harper said.
"We're confident (that) if we do those things and do it with integrity and treat the Canadian people honestly and intelligently that will pay dividends.''
