Get ready for a spring election.

That is phase two of Stephen Harper's newest plan to try and secure a majority government.

Phase one came this week, when for the second time in just over a year, he asked Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament and schedule a new session for March 3.

Last year at this time, Harper had to go cap in hand to the Governor General asking her to end the first session of the 40th Parliament only weeks after it had begun and less than two months after the election that returned him to power with his second minority government.

He was forced to do that because of a horrific miscalculation he had made at the time — the plan to end public funding for political parties and so bankrupt his political opponents.

Keeping at least one flame alive: Prime Minister Stephen Harper poses with former NHL player Joe Juneau as the Olympic torch arrived on Parliament Hill on Dec. 12, 2009. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

So upset were those opponents that they cobbled together a coalition to take down the government on a vote of confidence and so replace the Conservatives without an election.

To save himself, Harper had to convince the Governor General to suspend Parliament, to allow him to buy time, backtrack on the election-financing plan and build the political base against the proposed coalition.

Remove the platform

This year he has made another calculation.

If Parliament returned as first planned on January 25, his administration would again be under fire over how much it knew about the torturing of Afghan detainees by the government in Kabul.

He also knew that, with a budget to be delivered on March 4, all those previous weeks in the House of Commons would have been filled with opposition suggestions for what to put in it.

That these suggestions might well be impractical, even irresponsible, goes without saying.

They would likely be politically popular and there was no good reason, from the government's point of view, to let the opposition parties get away with that.

Opposition parties usually do better when the Commons is in session and the government under fire.

When he first came to Ottawa as a member of the Reform party, Harper was all about the supremacy of parliament and the importance of MPs.

He held that view all the way through his time as leader of the Canadian Alliance and then the Conservative party. All the time, that is, when he was in opposition.

Choose your backdrop

But once he came to power in 2006, his views began to change. And the longer in power, it seems, the more they changed.

MPs became a nuisance. So the ones in his own party, even in his cabinet, were told to be quiet.

He couldn't do that with the other three parties, so he tried to ignore them.

In fact, he tries to ignore Parliament as much as possible, even when it comes to giving the economic updates he is mandated to by a resolution of the House.

He doesn't like to unveil them in Ottawa, where the opposition are assembled. Instead he delivers them in front of partisan Conservative audiences who cheer him on.

Going for the gold

This year, Harper didn't go cap in hand to the Governor General. According to the reports, he just telephoned.

With that call and her agreement, he sacrificed half of the legislation his government introduced in 2009, the half that has not yet been passed.

A small price to pay, apparently, for silencing embarrassing questions on Afghanistan, the budget or any number of other issues.

Instead the game plan is to keep Parliament quiet while the Vancouver Olympics are on and hope Canadian athletes do well in the medal parade.

By their own internal logic, Conservative strategists think gold medals by the men's and women's hockey teams in particular will translate into that kind of feel-good moment that will lead to a majority government.

Of course these are the same strategists who thought that having Barack Obama come to Ottawa last February would replenish the Harper image, which had been tarnished by last year's proroguing of the House.

But who knows, maybe they are right. For no logical reason, Harper's image and approval ratings both were enhanced when he surprised everyone by playing the piano and singing a Beatles song on the stage of the National Arts Centre a few months ago.

The Olympics are a much bigger stage and if they go well, look for Harper and the Conservatives to try and find a way to provoke an election this spring. That's phase two of the plan.