Stephen Harper could finally get his election this fall, but it won’t be the one he wants.

Harper’s Tories have passed controversial legislation on immigration, taxation, and the environment over the last several months, practically daring Stéphane Dion’s Liberals to defeat them. The Liberals, afraid of a wipeout at the polls, meekly abstained from direct confrontation, allowing the Conservative minority to govern like a majority.

But in October, the opposition parties will get yet another chance to pull down the government when the House of Commons votes on Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s fiscal update. The resulting election could kick Harper and crew to the crib, if Canadians hold them to account for the financial troubles they’ve caused.

Caught between lower corporate taxes, lower GST revenues, and a seven per cent increase in government spending, Canada’s government started the current fiscal year with an $864 million deficit in April. In spite of the massive setback from a $2 billion surplus during the same period last year, Finance Minister Flaherty says he intends to continue implementing the five-year $60 billion tax cut package that was launched in 2007.

Flaherty still expects the government to meet its goal of a $2.3 billion surplus over the course of the year, but declining revenues are bound to make deficits more likely. This year’s surplus relies on the financial injection of $4.25 billion from the just-completed auction of wireless airwave licences, a one-time event.

So why imperil the country’s string of 11 consecutive budget surpluses, particularly during uncertain economic times? To provide a rationale for slashing government spending and eviscerating key programs, along the lines of what happened across the country in the 1990s.

Tom Flanagan, Reform-Alliance-Conservative policy guru and former Harper chief of staff, explicitly described the government’s long-term strategy to hobble federal spending powers when the 2008 federal budget was released last March. As believers in Republican-style small government, except when it comes to military and other security spending, the ideologues in charge of this government intend to remake Canada along American lines. And decisively winning a new election would secure the time and parliamentary backing to do so.

An October election call would allow the Tories to go to the polls claiming that the government was still running a surplus while fulfilling infrastructure and other spending commitments to the provinces and simultaneously championing tax cuts.

Perhaps the Tories believe they have undercut provincial opposition to them through flashy one-time deals, particularly in Ontario, where a $6.2 billion infrastructure deal has been reached with the re-elected provincial Liberal government, until now one of the federal government’s loudest and most hostile critics.

But even a re-elected Harper government would run the risk of obliteration if they followed the example of Mike Harris, the Progressive Conservative Ontario premier famous for chasing tax cuts with spending cuts. The strategy challenged the core of programs most Canadians believe in, like healthcare and environmental protection.

If the Tories suddenly switch from spending to cutting, and base the change on a deficit they created, they will lack credibility and set the stage for open war with the provinces. 

And of course, Canadians, whom polls show have decreasing confidence in the economy, might actually place blame for impending financial disaster where it belongs—with the Conservatives.

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