OTTAWA - The House of Commons has long been seized by mock outrage and dreary debate. Its return this week promises a rare moment of high drama.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives will likely learn Wednesday whether their 15-year-long quest to scrap the long-gun registry comes to fruition during a vote that has split the country along a jagged rural-urban divide and shaken the unity of the Liberal and New Democratic parties.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff will compel his caucus to vote to save the registry. Eight of his MPs defied his party's position on a similar vote last spring. His NDP counterpart, Jack Layton, saw 12 of his MPs -- about a third of his caucus -- ignore his entreaties and vote with the Conservatives.
Layton says he has persuaded enough of his MPs to change their vote and thwart the Conservatives. But the vote will be so close, and for some rural opposition MPs the stakes will be so high, that no one can predict the result with any certainty until the yeas and nays are tallied.
Diplomatic influenzas, abstentions and last-minute vote switches could dramatically alter the outcome.
Once that vote is dispatched, a session that has ranged from the raucous to the rote will resume with all-party promises to restore decorum expected to last the duration of the first daily question period.
The Conservatives insist they will take a more collaborative approach to politics this fall.
"We're going to, as we always do, approach things with an open mind. We do want to work together," Conservative House Leader John Baird said at a recent news conference.
"At the same time, we've got a good agenda, a strong agenda that we'd like to get through and I've offered to collaborate with my three counterparts and we'll see how it goes."
Baird insists the government doesn't want to go to the polls, but the permanent campaign that is minority government will include intensified pre-election posturing by the three main federal parties this fall.
A nagging unease that the economic slump in the U.S. will drive down employment numbers in Canada will compel the Conservatives to convince voters they are the only party who get Canada back in the black.
The prime minister and his caucus are also expected to tour the country to get input directly from Canadians on how they should proceed on the economic front and unveil job creation and other new economic stimulus programs.
Being seen as actually listening to the national voice is important for Harper after a summer where he was outed for ignoring advice on the long-form census and muzzling bureaucrats and scientists who want to speak to the public themselves on policy.
The Liberals are expected to play up the prime minister as a leader who isolates himself and government from real Canadians, while they send their leader out for weekly open-mike meetings.
The Tory priorities on the economy are wrong, said Liberal MP John McCallum.
"The top Conservative priority, measured in dollars, is the corporate tax cut, which will cost $20 billion over five years of borrowed money," he said.
"On top of that there's $16 billion for planes, $9 billion for prisons. And note that not one of these items is of direct interest or help for middle-class Canadian families," he said.
By contrast, he said the Liberals' priority is to support hard-pressed, middle-class families who are worrying about heavy debt loads, their retirement security and how they'll afford child care, post-secondary education and support for aging parents.
NDP Leader Jack Layton said Canadians are growing increasingly uneasy about Harper's leadership.
"It's as though people are beginning to realize the type of politics he practises doesn't resonate with them. So there's probably an increasing impulse in the country to say we need a change in government," Layton said.
But at the same time, people are more concerned about the economy.
"For us, the key objective for the fall is to insist that there's no recovery until there's a middle-class recovery, where people don't get increasingly left behind," he said.
"And that's right now what's happening. So that's going to be a core objective in the coming months."
Some political observers say the more interesting arguments in the House won't be between Harper and the opposition, but between the Ignatieff and Layton, as each compete for ownership of the economic agenda.
The parties will also continue to haggle over access to documents detailing Canada's handover of Afghan detainees. A three-person panel was appointed in June to oversee the documents' release.
Meanwhile, the Tories will also push forward on their anti-crime platform.
At least nine law-and-order government bills will move ahead in the parliamentary pecking order this fall, while they intend to add another into the mix right away -- a bill to combat human smuggling.
The government also intends to introduce legislation to cut the number of mega-trials and reintroduce legislation to end sentence discounts for multiple murderers.
