Harper invites Ignatieff to rare tete-a-tete before critical vote

From Yahoo News....


2 hours, 11 minutes ago

8:50pm Monday June 15th, 2009.


By Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press



OTTAWA - The threat of a BBQ-season election hovered over the nation's capital like smoke off the grill after Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Liberal rival made tactical moves designed to place the fate of Parliament in the other's hands.


Harper invited Michael Ignatieff to a rare tete-a-tete Tuesday to see if a truce could be forged before a critical confidence vote by week's end.


With the NDP and Bloc Quebecois committed to voting against supplementary budget estimates, the ball and the government's fate was in Ignatieff's hands.


Ignatieff took the ball Monday morning and tapped it softly at Harper.


Show me your plans for EI, how much has been spent so far on stimulus projects, when you'll pay down the deficit and what your plan is for medical isotopes, Ignatieff demanded gently.


But if meeting those demands takes longer than this week, that's OK too by Ignatieff.


Cooperation, not confrontation, was the Liberal leader's mantra. That conciliatory tone was carefully calibrated to betray neither weakness nor bloodlust.


"My party doesn't control the timing of elections in any case. It's the prime minister and his government's responsibiity to maintain the confidence of the House," Ignatieff told reporters.


"For our part, the Liberal party has consistently shown that we want to make Parliament work for all Canadians. The real question is does Mr. Harper want Parliament to work?"


Harper's response was equally measured, offering the slightest hint of compromise.


He noted that his government planned to announce changes that would bring self-employed Canadians into the EI program, but that they were not measures that could be finalized in a matter of days.


"I would encourage Mr. Ignatieff and his party if they want to contribute to that idea or if they have other ideas, to be clear about them, and we'll certainly be prepared to dialogue about them over the summer," Harper told reporters.


But that was as far as Harper would go, underlining that the opposition would be to blame for stalled stimulus spending if the government fell. That provided a glimpse of the prime minister's campaign rhetoric.


"It's quite a contradiction. You can't say you're concerned about spending not happening and then vote against giving the government the parliamentary authority to spend money."


NDP Leader Jack Layton scoffed at Harper's line.


"They can't have it both ways. They're saying all this money has gone out, but now they're saying this money won't go out if there's an election - which is it?"


Ignatieff later said that Harper had taken a "couple of milimetre steps," but "we're not out of the woods yet."

No party in the Commons wants an election. The Conservatives are declining in the polls, the Liberals are cash-strapped, the NDP are trying to regain ground they've lost since last fall and the Bloc Quebecois are also on shifting ground in their home province.

The public doesn't want one either. A Harris-Decima poll Monday pegged the number at 78 per cent opposed.

Pollster Nik Nanos, of Nanos Research, calls it a "game of poker where everyone's bluffing, but nobody's holding anything."

Nanos said Ignatieff made an impressive strategic play - exploiting perceived Harper weaknesses of transparency, accountability and intractability.

"The prime minister has to be looking at the current environment and the numbers and knowing that he can't really risk his government on an election, knowing that Michael Ignatieff hasn't set anything down that's a big ask," Nanos said.

But it's a high stakes game for Ignatieff too, who is haunted by the shadow of former leader Stephane Dion. The former Liberal leader made and lost a leadership career by excoriating the government's policies and then ensuring that his caucus turned up for confidence votes in insufficient numbers to bring the government down.


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