UPDATE 1-Canada minority government seen falling on Nov 28

UPDATE 1-Canada minority government seen falling on Nov 28
Wed Nov 16, 2005 1:07 PM ET

By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA, Nov 16 (Reuters) -

Canada's opposition is most likely to bring down the minority Liberal government on Nov. 28 and trigger a new election, Conservative leader Stephen Harper said on Wednesday.

Harper said he would prefer to move earlier but would stick to a timetable agreed on Sunday with the two smaller opposition parties.

Under that arrangement, the opposition will team up in Parliament to ask Prime Minister Paul Martin to dissolve Parliament in January and set a February election, and then proceed to topple the government if Martin refuses.

"The agreement is that if the prime minister has not clearly agreed, solemnly committed, to call the election in January then a non-confidence (motion) would go ahead on the Thursday (Nov. 24)," Harper told reporters.

He said the vote in Parliament on such a motion would be expected to be delayed to Monday, Nov. 28. The election campaign would normally begin the next day, with a date expected to be set some time in January.

Martin has already rejected the February election idea.

He still has one parliamentary tactic he could use to delay an election, however. He could "prorogue" Parliament, interrupting its session indefinitely and blocking any confidence motions as well as any legislation.

That strategy was seen as a risky long shot, though Martin refused to explicitly rule it out when asked about it by a reporter.

"I'm not going to respond to every rumor. I made it very clear that I am here to govern," he said, shortly before leaving for South Korea for an Asia-Pacific summit.

"I am going to continue to govern until such time as in fact a non-confidence motion is passed by the opposition and the government falls," Martin said.

Harper said that if Martin did interrupt the parliamentary session, he would be seen to be running from the voters.

A senior Liberal source said such a strategy would be very unlikely because it would prevent Parliament from approving supplementary government spending. If the government does not fall, a vote on that spending is scheduled for Dec. 8.

Martin, who lost his majority in Parliament in the June 2004 election, would prefer to delay the next election until April 2006.

He hopes that by that time public anger over a kickbacks scandal that involved some Liberal Party officials will have worn off. The scandal was the subject of a judicial inquiry that released its fact-finding report on Nov. 1.

An SES poll in Wednesday's Sun newspapers put the Liberal lead in public opinion at six percentage points, enough to form a minority government again, but just half the lead the Liberals had on the eve of the scandal inquiry report.

SES put the Liberals at 34 percent, the Conservatives at 28 percent and the left-leaning New Democrats at 20 percent.

A Pollara poll provided to Reuters on Tuesday put the Liberals at 36 percent, the Conservatives at 28 percent and the New Democrats at 20 percent.