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OTTAWA: Canada's Conservative government on Tuesday vowed to fight an opposition bid to topple it and take over without new elections, saying it is an attack on democracy.
"We will be fighting this with every legal means at our disposal," a senior government official said. "It's an attack on Canada. It's an attack on Canada's democracy. It's an attack on our economy."
The official was speaking as the country's acting head of state Governor General Michaelle Jean announced she was cutting short a European trip to return home to manage the brewing crisis.
"I think that my presence is required in the country," Jean told public broadcaster CBC from the Czech Republic.
The G8 nation has been plunged into a constitutional crisis after opposition parties this week vowed to oust the government and install a leftist-separatist coalition led by Liberal leader Stephane Dion.
The opposition move was triggered over differences on how to seed an economic turnaround as Canada confronts a global financial crisis.
But it comes just six weeks after Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was reelected with a stronger minority in the country's third snap elections in four years.
"As prime minister, it is not my responsibility to turn the keys of power over to a group like that," Harper said in parliament during a heated exchange with Dion.
"The highest principle of Canadian democracy is that if you want to be prime minister, you get your mandate from the Canadian people, not from Quebec separatists."
He said Dion's actions are "a betrayal of the voters of this country, a betrayal of the best interests of our economy, a betrayal of the best interests of our country, and we will fight it with every means we have."
The Conservatives meanwhile unfurled radio advertisements denouncing the Liberals and the socialist New Democratic Party for plotting with the separatist Bloc Quebecois to bring down the government in a December 8 no-confidence vote.
The government also planned public rallies across the country, an online campaign and a possible national televised address by Harper.
In the coming days, Harper could ask the governor general to prorogue parliament until the end of January when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hopes to unveil his budget and present a plan for an economic turnaround.
It would be up to the governor general whether parliament is shut down over the Christmas holidays to give Harper more time to sort out the crisis, or allow the coalition's request for a chance to govern now.
Luc Juillet, a politico at the University of Ottawa, said it is likely parliament will be shut down at Harper's request.
Alternately, the governor general could dissolve parliament and ask voters to weigh in.
"The prime minister and myself need to have a conversation that we haven't had yet, and as soon as I will be back to Ottawa, my door is open," said the governor general, who is the representative of Queen Elizabeth II.
Canada is the only Group of Eight industrialised country which so far appears to be weathering the financial crisis that started in the United States with a subprime mortgage market meltdown.
As well, it is the only industrialised nation expected to post positive economic growth in the coming year.
On Thursday, Flaherty unveiled a fiscal update saying Canada would post its 12th consecutive budget surplus next year, with a much reduced surplus, but opposition parties accused him of hiding a deficit.
Flaherty has since back-pedalled on a basket of proposed measures that provoked opposition parties, including a cut to subsidies for political parties that would have bankrupted at least one of the three opposition parties and a temporary public sector strike ban to 2011.
But opposition parties said it was all "too little, too late."
Editorials said Stephane Dion, after his Liberal Party suffered in October its worst electoral defeat since confederation in 1867, has not earned the right to govern.
But they also blamed the government's woes on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's own machinations and a failure of leadership.
- AFP/yb
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