OTTAWA - The Conservative government's omnibus crime-fighting bill has cleared another hurdle in the Liberal-dominated Senate, passing committee study without amendment.
The bill will likely be reported to the full Senate on Wednesday and -- barring any last-minute procedural glitches -- appears on track to pass by week's end.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared the bill a matter of confidence when it was before the Commons and threatened to call an election if it didn't passe the upper house by March 1.
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion denounced the move as a "juvenile'' effort by the minority Tory government to engineer its own downfall and force voters to the polls this spring.
Liberal strategists in the Senate have also made it clear in recent weeks that they didn't want to give Harper an opportunity to launch an election over the issue.
Marc Roy, a spokesman for Celine Hervieux-Payette, the Grit leader in the Senate, says the party refrained from amending the bill in committee even though it thought the legislation could be improved.
"There was a clear indication on the government side that amendments would not be evaluated on their merit, but would be used as an excuse to trigger an election,'' said Roy.
In effect, that would have killed the legislation while MPs hit the campaign trail. "We wouldn't want the government to have an excuse to kill it,'' said Roy.
The omnibus legislation is a recycled version of five earlier bills that would, among other things, toughen mandatory minimum sentences for gun-related crimes and strengthen bail rules for people awaiting trial on such offences.
Other sections would raise the minimum age of sexual consent to 16 from 14, beef up laws against drug-impaired driving and make it easier to declare serious repeat offenders a danger to society and lock them up indefinitely.
Three of the five provisions had already passed the Commons and were in the Senate last summer when Harper called an end to the parliamentary session, making it necessary to start over.
The new version passed the Commons in late November with all-party support.
Opposition critics scoffed at Harper's contention that it was being held up in the Senate, saying the upper house couldn't start detailed study until Parliament returned a month ago from an extended holiday.
