Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his decision to prorogue Parliament had nothing to do with cancelling Commons committees or avoiding a showdown over an opposition motion demanding the government turn over documentation on Afghan detainees.

Instead, he says in recent interviews, including with the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, that Parliament was given an extra four weeks off so he could "recalibrate" his government's approach, particularly on the budget and the economy.

He also said he doesn't want a spring election, so there will be no "poison pill" in the budget in March that would force the opposition to defeat the Conservatives on a confidence motion.

But both his decision to prorogue, and the way events are unfolding from that decision, look more like the actions of someone looking for an electoral confrontation — not someone trying to make a minority government work.

Building consensus? Finance Minister Jim Flaherty speaks to reporters after he presented an update on the Canadian government's action plan at the University of Winnipeg in December 2009. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

Consider the economy.

The most pressing problem facing the country has yet to hit home.

In the past year, a mountain of debt has been rung up fighting the Great Recession of 2009. In the past 12 months, just about all of the public debt that was reduced over the past decade has been put back on the government books.

What that likely means is that these historically low interest rates we all now enjoy are bound to rise later this year as Ottawa gets back into the borrowing game.

At the same time, no reputable economist without a political axe to grind believes that taking the stimulus spending out of the budget after this year and waiting on economic growth is going to get us out of this latest fiscal mess.

So wouldn't someone who claims to want Parliament to work be interested in a process that keeps MPs on the job and gives confidence to people that those in Ottawa know what they are doing?

My way or no way

So far, because of the weakness of the opposition Liberals, Harper has been able to act, on many issues at least, as though he has a majority.

And where he can't impose his will that way, he either abandons his plans, as he did on reversing same-sex marriage, or he overly politicizes them to keep his Conservative base happy, as he has done with much of his anti-crime agenda legislation, which has failed to move forward over the past three years.

When the opposition has had the upper hand, as it did over the so-called in-and-out investigation of Conservative party election spending, his MPs disrupted the committee and made it impossible for hearings to be held.

Now, in the case of the Afghanistan papers, he has shut down more than just committees. He has shut down Parliament entirely.

Build a consensus

Against that background, the prime minister's protestations that he doesn't want an election should be taken with a grain of salt.

If the House was not prorogued, the Commons finance committee, which is led by Conservative James Rajotte, would be able to hold the pre-budget consultations it usually does.

True, economists and special interest groups will still be able to make their pitches behind closed doors at the Finance Department. But a government truly interested in facing up to the massive mountain of debt ahead, ought to be thinking about building a public consensus on how to get the country's books in order.

A government that is serious about dealing with the problem should be encouraging public hearings where respected economists like Don Drummond, Dale Orr, Bill Robson, Mike McCracken and Jim Stanford would spell out in detail the scope of the problems and the choices that will have to be made to deal with them.

Remember, back in the 1990s when the Finance Minister Paul Martin tackled the huge debt that had been built up over previous governments, he used the public sessions of the finance committee's consultation process brilliantly to build public support for what he knew would be very unpopular measures.

Surely Jim Flaherty should have the same opportunity now.

Timing is everything

Instead, Flaherty is going to be coming back to Parliament after a prolonged absence for a throne speech and then a budget the very next day, which raises the question:

Is the March 3 budget going to be an exercise in sophistry rivalling the economic update of November 2008, which predicted there would be no downturn in 2009 and contained the poisoned provision of cancelling public financing for political parties, which almost cost the re-elected Harper his new government?

To save his skin then, Harper had to get the Governor General to prorogue Parliament and avoid a confidence vote that would have defeated his government.

This time if the opposition can't support a budget it had no input in designing and the government is defeated, the prime minister will obviously say he has no choice but to ask for an election. And he will get one.

That election would come before the stimulus spending runs out. Before interest rates start to go up. And also, before parliamentary committees can start looking at the question of Afghanistan detainees or the documentation about them.

Of course, if that happens the Conservatives will claim they didn't want the election. They will say the opposition forced it on us.

But history shows that minority governments that want to be defeated, because they see a majority in their grasp, act and govern as though they already have a majority. That is what leads to the defeat they seek.

So if the prime minister really doesn't want an election, he should stop behaving as though he does. It's one of those situations where the old adage applies: Watch what he does, not what he says.