OTTAWA - Stephen Harper said Tuesday he won't consider Canada's recession-battered economy to be in recovery until the unemployment rate starts to come down.
In his first interview of the new year, the prime minister also defended his decision to suspend Parliament until March 3.
He said proroguing Parliament was a "routine" matter, aimed at giving the government time to recalibrate its agenda now that the economy is starting to emerge from the worldwide recession.
"Everything seems to be moving in the right direction," he said of the economy during an interview with CBC's The National.
Nevertheless, Harper said the fact that unemployment is stuck at 8.5 per cent leads him to be cautious about asserting, as his fellow economists have done, that the recession is over.
"We can argue that technically but we all know that, while the unemployment situation has stabilized, we haven't yet recouped some of the job losses that we had last year," he said.
"Until we start to see that, I won't be satisfied that we're on the road to recovery."
Harper declined to peg a more acceptable unemployment rate but said he finds 8.5 per cent to be "a bit too high." He said he'd like to see the rate fall back towards the pre-recession levels of 5.5 to 6.5 per cent.
He predicted that labour shortages will quickly return once the economy is fully in recovery.
Harper said the budget, scheduled for March 4, one day after the new session of Parliament opens, will contain the second phase of stimulus spending unveiled last year. But he warned that once stimulus spending ends early in 2011, Canadians should expect to see the growth of government spending constrained until the massive deficit has been erased.
He insisted prorogation has nothing to do with a desire to shut down parliamentary hearings into allegations that prisoners handed over by Canadian soldiers to Afghan authorities were tortured. Indeed, he suggested the detainee issue is of little interest to Canadians.
Harper also dismissed speculation that he may trigger a spring election, arguing that no one wants a nationwide vote while the country remains in a period of economic uncertainty.
On a personal note, Harper said he thinks he's "probably more patient" and "probably less sensitive to criticism" after four years as prime minister.
He also said he's less partisan, although he acknowledged his political opponents "would have a hard time believing that."
"The longer you're in government and the more you deal with a range of issues, you deal with a range of the population . . . (and) the more comfortable our government becomes with the Canadian people, the more partisanship becomes the domain of the opposition."
