Federal Liberals are passing up another chance to pull the plug on Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has indicated that the party will vote for the new budget unveiled by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on February 26.

So far, the Grits have been stared down by the Tories. Liberals abstained from the vote on the throne speech last fall. On February 12, they walked out of the House of Commons when the Conservatives tabled a confidence motion on a crime bill. The Liberals are likely to support an extension of Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan, which the Conservatives want to be a confidence vote.

“We will not call an election just because it’s a game that people play: you know, ”˜Let’s play chicken and see who would call and won’t call,’ ” Vancouver Centre Liberal MP Hedy Fry told the Georgia Straight by phone on February 20. “We haven’t lost credibility.”

That was six days before the budget came down, while the five-term MP and her staff were driving to Kelowna. Fry, who heads the Liberal caucus in British Columbia, related that they’d just been to Kamloops and Vernon. Penticton was going to be their last stop for the day.

Fry said that her foray through the Tory heartland in B.C.’s Interior was all about “really finding out the issues that are nonurban” and “not necessarily” related to any prospect of a spring election.

She didn’t agree with a suggestion that the Liberals are weak and in disarray, and can ill afford a campaign. According to Fry, the party just won’t play what she described as “mind games” in which the Conservatives want to engage.

“We think it’s manipulation,” Fry said. “It seems to be the way Mr. Harper runs his government. I think that they’re setting traps because they want to show that we’re weak. But if we fall into the trap, then we are. If you do not allow yourself to be manipulated, that is a strength in itself.”

How long will the Liberals continue to prop up the government? Eventually, this could come with a price, says UBC political scientist Allan Tupper.

“There is this point that many people have noticed or have observed that one of the things that Mr. Dion will have to confront sooner or later is his claims that the government proceeds in an intolerable way and so on, but [the Liberal party] ends either voting for its measures or abstaining,” Tupper told the Straight. “You can only play that game so far before you begin to look very weak. Many people have observed that they [Liberals] speak more loudly than their actions. When they have a chance to defeat the government, they back down.”

Tupper, who heads UBC’s political-science department, didn’t go so far as to suggest that the Liberals’ hesitancy to bring down the government has seriously eroded support from their political base.

“What it would really take to trigger it is either an accident, which can always happen”¦or that one of the major parties in a minority Parliament begins to become more popular and sees its advantage and moves on with it,” Tupper explained.

Results of a February 2008 survey by the Ontario-based Strategic Counsel for the Globe and Mail and CTV indicate that the Conservatives enjoy a 12-percent lead over the Liberals, their biggest lead since the 2006 election.

In its report, the Strategic Counsel noted that the Conservatives are “flirting with majority territory”. It also pointed out that triggering an election would be “highly risky” for Liberals, even referring to such action as a “big roll of the dice”.

Already more than two years old, the Harper government has made a “remarkable achievement” in lasting this long, according to Conservative Delta–Richmond East MP John Cummins.

“Most minority governments would have fallen by now,” Cummins told the Straight. “Harper has demonstrated real leadership in managing Parliament.”

Cummins only has disdain for the Liberals who haven’t called—as of yet—the Conservatives’ dare to slug it out on the hustings.

“They’re trying to justify their inability to make a decision,” Cummins said. “They’re trying to make themselves appear as someone above the fray and give the appearance that they’re more interested in sort of providing a stable government at this point, but the reality is the reason that they’re not acting is that they’re in complete disarray.”

However, the Liberals are far from being pushovers, Cummins acknowledged, pointing out that, traditionally, the Grits have 30 percent of the vote and that their voters are sticking with them. Liberals aren’t itching for a fight, but as far as the Conservatives are concerned, Cummins said: “We’re ready to go at the drop of a hat.”