OTTAWA — Opposition MPs have given Prime Minister Stephen Harper more ammunition to declare Parliament dysfunctional and plunge the country into an early fall election.

Opposition members of the Commons public safety committee used their majority Monday to pass a rare motion asking the House of Commons to compel Maxime Bernier to testify about the embarrassing affair that forced his resignation as foreign affairs minister last May.

The decision to challenge the government over the Bernier affair brings to seven the number of House committees that are either inquiring into Conservative controversies or are deadlocked because the government has refused to allow similar investigations to go ahead.

The motion is bound to further antagonize Harper, who recently claimed opposition committee tactics have paralyzed Parliament and hinted strongly that he plans to pull the plug on his minority Conservative government before the House of Commons returns to work on Sept. 15.

MPs on the public safety committee met in a closed-door session for the decision to summon Bernier, who refused an earlier invitation to testify about how he left classified NATO briefing documents at the Montreal home of former girlfriend Julie Couillard.

The committee also passed a motion to issue a summons to Couillard, who refused earlier requests to appear, citing a foreign affairs department investigation into the incident.

That departmental inquiry concluded Couillard improperly kept the documents at her house for several days and accepted Bernier's statement that he did not know he had left them or notice that they were missing.

Given Harper's election threats, there's no guarantee Bernier will be forced to testify. All committees will be dissolved if an election is called.

But the committee's move Monday nonetheless adds to pressure the opposition parties are putting on Harper as they flex their majority muscle on a range of House panels.

Opposition MPs forced an inquiry last week by the agriculture committee into a leaked report that revealed the government intends to cut services at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and shift responsibility for some inspections to industry. That inquiry took on new significance a few days later amid the tainted-meat disaster at Maple Leaf foods in Toronto.

The Commons heritage committee is meeting Tuesday in another opposition-induced emergency meeting over government cuts to arts funding.

And a new subcommittee engineered by the opposition parties is meeting this week to begin an inquiry into high gasoline prices.

Once Parliament returns, the ethics committee intends to resume its investigation into allegations that the Conservative party intentionally exceeded its campaign spending limit in 2006 election by $1.1 million.

Two other panels - the justice committee and the procedure and House affairs committee - are deadlocked.

The government refuses to allow a justice committee inquiry into allegations Conservatives tried to bribe Chuck Cadman, the late independent MP, into voting to defeat the previous Liberal government. The House affairs committee has not met since March after opposition MPs failed in their first attempt to inquire into Tory campaign spending irregularities.

Despite Harper's claim of parliamentary dysfunction, however, opposition MPs say the prime minister has only himself to blame. They note that 17 other standing committees of the Commons were functioning when Parliament recessed for the summer.

"He is the author of the gridlock," said Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc.

He noted that 24 Tories ignored summonses to testify at the ethics committee and Doug Finley, Harper's chief political organizer, had to be ejected by guards when he insisted on testifying three days before his scheduled appearance.

One of Canada's best-known parliamentary experts agrees Harper may have a difficult time convincing voters that Parliament is paralyzed, given that 29 bills have become law in the past year. But political scientist Ned Franks says he has never witnessed the degree of turmoil now seizing House committees.

"I don't think I've seen so many committees loaded for bear in my life," Franks said in an interview.

Tories blame the opposition parties for the mess, saying they've "hijacked" the committees to focus on juicy, partisan scandals rather than provide legislative scrutiny.

"These committees are off track, they're on a witch hunt," said Tory MP Pierre Lemieux, a member of the ethics committee.