CANADA’S SEVEN-WEEK-OLD minority conservative government has won a temporary reprieve after prime minister Stephen Harper persuaded the country’s governor general to shut down parliament until he presents a new budget at the end of January.
Mr Harper faced almost certain defeat in a confidence vote next Monday after the centrist Liberals made a coalition deal with the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP) with the support of the Quebec sovereigntist Bloc Québécois.
Emerging from a two-hour meeting with governor general Michaëlle Jean yesterday morning, Mr Harper acknowledged that he had “some trust building” to do with the opposition parties.
“My work over the next few weeks will be focused almost exclusively on preparing the federal budget,” he said.
Mr Harper won re-election in October with an increased mandate but the opposition parties joined forces last week in an attempt to topple him after the prime minister proposed cutting subsidies to political parties and removing the right to strike for civil servants.
The Conservatives have 143 seats in Canada’s parliament, compared to a combined total of 114 for the Liberals and the NDP, but the Bloc Québécois’s 49 votes would be enough to give the new coalition a working majority.
In a rare, televised address on Wednesday evening, Mr Harper accused the main opposition parties of joining forces with “separatists” to overturn October’s election result.
“They propose a new coalition which includes the party in parliament whose avowed goal is to break up the country. Let me be very clear: Canada’s government cannot enter into a powersharing coalition with a separatist party,” Mr Harper said.
“At a time of global economic instability, Canada’s government must stand unequivocally for keeping the country together. At a time like this, a coalition with the separatists cannot help Canada. And the opposition does not have the democratic right to impose a coalition with the separatists they promised voters would never happen.”
Another Conservative member of parliament, Bob Dechert, went further, accusing the Liberals and NDP of treason for accepting the support of the Bloc Québécois.
“They’ve actually written a deal giving the separatists a veto over every decision of the Canadian government,” he said. “That is as close to treason and sedition as I can imagine.”
Conservative criticism of the coalition deal has been undermined by the revelation in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper, of efforts by members of the Canadian Alliance – which later joined the Conservatives – to make a deal with the Bloc to form a minority coalition.
Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe confirmed that he was asked to take part at the time in a scheme to make the Canadian Alliance’s leader prime minister in the event of a minority government.
“This proves that they are now being hypocritical. They pretend that they are outraged, when a good number of them have tried the same thing,” Mr Duceppe said.