"The next election is going to revolve around Stephen Harper versus Stéphane Dion and who is the best Prime Minister. It's not going to be, 'Do you love Stephen Harper?' It's, 'Does he make the best prime minister?' That's going to be the ballot question," one top Conservative told The Hill Times last week. "So, we're going to take every opportunity we can to paint Dion as an ineffectual person, not a leader and we're going to be working on the adjectives, to get one or two adjectives in their minds when they think about him and keep repeating [those]."

The source, who spoke to The Hill Times on condition of anonymity, said the Tories, depending on the need, could also make more attack ads against Mr. Dion (Saint Laurent-Cartierville, Que.) portraying him as an ineffective leader. In the current session of Parliament, Liberals have abstained en masse twice on two confidence votes–on the Throne Speech and on tax cuts including the GST cut from six per cent to five per cent. Officially, Liberals say that they disagreed with the government on both votes, but abstained because Canadians don't want an election. It's widely believed, however, they did not vote against the government because this would have triggered an election and they're afraid of going to the polls at this time. To make matters worse, Mr. Dion told reporters he might revisit the issue of a GST cut announced by the Harper government if he became Prime Minister.

"This is tailor-made for Stephen Harper. He's a man who has priorities and his whole raison d'etre in government is to achieve and here's Stéphane Dion, Canada's political Gumby, can't make up his mind yet, big priorities, can't make decisions, once he does, makes wrong ones. Nobody, no political leader in their right mind, should have gone within a hundred miles of saying, 'Well, maybe we'll raise the GST.' His political antenna must be shaped like a Slinky."

Two weeks ago, Conservatives released another set of attack ads accusing the Liberals of planning a "multi-million dollar tax grab by hiking the GST." The ad says that Mr. Dion is "not a leader," "not worth the risk and does not know how to set priorities."

Conservatives themselves are no strangers to abstaining from a confidence vote as they were the first to set a precedent in Canadian political history to abstain en masse in 2005 on the budget vote as the official opposition. But last week, Chief Government Whip Jay Hill (Prince George-Peace River, B.C.) said that there's no comparison between the two.

"At that time, our leader Stephen Harper clearly said this is not a Conservative budget, he didn't spend a whole bunch of time trashing the budget. He stated the obvious, 'It's not a Conservative budget. If I was prime minister, I would have done a lot of things differently but on balance this is not a budget worth forcing another election on Canadians.' End of story," Mr. Hill said in a telephone interview from his riding, adding that it was a credible position to take. "When we abstained, everybody knew in advance we were going to abstain, there was no surprise and [Mr. Harper] was able to maintain his personal credibility. Stéphane Dion's problem is that his two positions are directly contradictory. You can't tell Canadians, on one hand that this is terrible and then credibly say, 'Oh, by the way, we're going to sit on our hands and we're going to allow the government to continue.' So, one of two things has to happen, I would think is that in order to maintain his credibility, either he has to defeat us or he has to find a few more good things to say about our policies."

Mr. Hill declined to discuss the Conservative Party's election strategy regarding Mr. Dion, but said that everyone has a record they need to defend out on the hustings. "Each and every one of us, from the leader down to all the backbenchers, on both sides of the House either in opposition or in government, all of us have a record, be it individually or as our political affiliation, our parties and we run on that record. Obviously, Mr. Dion, the Prime Minister, we're going to have a record that we have to defend in the next election campaign. So, everything that Mr. Dion has done or more appropriately has not done in the sense of just sitting there is obviously part of his record and he's going to have to defend his actions or inactions."

Conservatives and NDP MPs told The Hill Times that the Liberals have damaged their credibility as the official opposition by not taking a clear stand on confidence votes.

"Certainly when I am talking in my riding, that's probably the best assessment I can make. At that level, there's real disdain on the part of the average voter who is watching what's going on. There's a real disdain for the Liberals on this," said NDP MP Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.) in an interview.

Mr. Comartin declined to say whether his party would use attack ads against Mr. Dion, saying it was "premature" to do so.

"I would imagine we will continue to be critical of him in the next election but whether that is in fact an issue I would hope whenever the next election comes that it would be fought on issues rather than on political strategy," Mr. Comartin said.

Liberals disagreed that by abstaining from voting on confidence issues, Mr. Dion has hurt his credibility. In fact, it's having the opposite effect, said Liberal Party President Senator Marie Poulin.

"What Mr. Dion is doing, he's taken hold of the agenda," she said. "We're ready for an election. The leader will choose when the appropriate time is and on what issue."

Liberal Whip Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Ont.) said that the Conservatives want an election and they're using every provocative measure possible to trigger one. But she added that Liberals want this Parliament to work.

"What's abundantly clear is that we have a Prime Minister of a minority government that is choosing to act like a majority. He's using bully tactics, he's trying to provoke an election [but] Mr. Dion has said, 'Mr. Harper you will have your election but it's not going to be because you bully us and there are very important issues,'" she said. "For a man who brought in fixed election dates, he has done everything he can to turn up the heat and create an expectation and a false war that we are teetering on the brink of confidence votes because he's declared that every piece of legislation flowing from the Throne Speech is a confidence vote and that's highly unusual and most provocative."

Liberal MP Bryon Wilfert (Richmond Hill, Ont.) in an interview said that if the Conservatives ran negative attacks ads against Mr. Dion, it will not yield any positive support for the Conservatives.

"The Conservative Party seems to relish in negativity rather than in anything positive. If I was a parent, I wouldn't be too keen on seeing ads which continually attack but never say anything positive. Maybe they don't have anything positive to say about themselves. Negative ads of any kind are counter productive."

Mr. Wilfert said that the Conservatives are underestimating Mr. Dion and he will prove all who underestimate him wrong.

"I have worked with him [Mr. Dion] extremely closely over the years. I can say he's very principled, very strong. Once he makes his mind up, these people have underestimated him in the past and I'm sure they will do so again at their peril."