The two main federal leaders are both huffing and puffing about a federal election sometime this fall, despite the fact that Parliament voted to fix the election date.

However, no matter. This is Canada, and the ways and means to trigger elections here are almost infinite.

"They have to do it a little more craftily than in the past, but it wouldn't be too hard for them (the Conservatives) to set a trap for the Liberals," Carleton University political scientist Jonathan Malloy told CTV.ca on Wednesday. 

"(Prime Minister Stephen) Harper can engineer the defeat of his government in 30 seconds," Michael Behiels, a University of Ottawa history professor, told CTV.ca.

Parliament is set to reconvene on Sept. 15. Harper has said he will have to decide in the coming weeks whether this minority Parliament can continue to work -- even though in various speeches, he has praised his government's legislative achievements.

The Conservatives have made it clear they intend to table bills and deem them confidence votes to force the hand of Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.

However, on Tuesday, Harper also suggested his government's fixed-election law wasn't valid any more because of all the election talk flowing from the opposition.

"Obviously, the election will not be in October, 2009, and it's obvious I will have to analyze the parliamentary situation," he said in both French and English.

"We did establish a fixed date for the next election. That said, in this minority Parliament, two of the parties, the Bloc [Québécois] and the NDP, have indicated for some months now that they want an election immediately. Mr. Dion has indicated that the government has to be defeated, but he's not sure when he'll do that because he hasn't got good enough polls. I don't think that's a particularly responsible position."

He left open the option of simply asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and drop the writ.

Dion said Tuesday his party may move to bring down the Harper government this fall. Dion accused Harper of being willing to break the Tories' own election law for political convenience -- even though he admits that he's trying to maximize the timing advantage for his party.

He used a fishing analogy, saying that he caught a tournament-winning pike by showing "a lot of patience, and because I struck at the right time." Harper has been saying Dion has to either fish or cut bait on the election issue.

Rosemary Thompson, CTV's deputy Ottawa bureau chief, told CTV.ca that very senior Tory sources have told CTV News the government would like to see a federal election held on Oct. 27 -- 2008.

Behiels said the fixed-election-date law was a bit of "a bit of Reform (Party) hocus pocus. So now (Harper is) caught in that, but not really caught."

Queens University's Ned Franks agrees, telling CTV.ca the bill creates more of a political problem for Harper than a legal or constitutional one in calling an early election. He agreed one could think of the law as 'a fixed election date if necessary, but not necessarily a fixed election date' -- to paraphrase former prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. "It's what in the trade they call a 'pious hope' -- in other words, a promise that can be broken with impunity if you think you can get away with it," he said of the act.

Harper is getting impatient with the fact that Dion holds the Sword of Damocles over his government, Behiels said. "He wants to get the opposition, especially the Liberals, to put up or shut up.

"And so this is a lot of posturing and chest-beating on behalf of both Harper and Dion."

If Harper wants an election, he simply has to follow the example of Pierre Trudeau in 1974, who brought in a confidence bill that none of opposition parties could bear to support, he said.

Dysfunction?

The prime minister has complained about dysfunction in Parliament, particularly  in the committees where the opposition holds an advantage (the Tories once issued a manual on how to obstruct committee work).

But Rosemary Thompson said the antics of Conservative witnesses at recent hearings into the so-called "in-and-out" affair from the 2006 federal election raise questions about whether the Tories are actually trying to create dysfunction in order to provide cover for triggering a federal campaign.

Maybe they needn't worry.

Roughly eight years ago, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien called an election for Nov. 27, 2000 -- even though he was only about three years into a majority mandate.

"Mr. (Stockwell) Day dared me to call an election," Chretien told reporters on Oct. 17, 2000 as he kicked off the campaign. Day had only been on the job as Canadian Alliance leader since July.

Some pundits speculated the voters would punish Chretien for calling an early and unnecessary election. They were wrong. Chretien's Liberals won 172 seats, a gain of 15 over 1997. No party has won a majority since.

However, Chretien -- whom the Tories privately admire as a political operator, Thompson said -- went into the campaign with his party polling in the high 40s. The Alliance was stuck in the 20 per cent range.

Current polls show a statistically insignificant difference between the Liberals and Conservatives, but that might change once an election call forces people to start thinking about their choices, pollster Peter Donolo of The Strategic Counsel told CTV.ca.

With a softening economy weakening government coffers -- including a deficit in the first two months of the current fiscal year -- and a depleted legislative agenda, both Donolo and Behiels said Harper now sees logic in triggering a vote.

At the same time, "I don't think the Liberals can continue to play the same game" -- propping up the Tories to buy themselves time, Behiels said. "Now that stage is over, and Mr. Dion is the one who has to make a tough decision," he said.

Harper may wish to pre-empt that for Dion and continue building the narrative that his Grit rival is a weak leader, he said.

Despite all the election talk, Thompson said it still doesn't feel to her like a typical pre-election period in Ottawa.

There have been election high alerts issued repeatedly over the 2½-year life of this minority Parliament that eventually turned out to be false. It remains to be seen if the leaders will fish this time, or if they'll continue to cut bait.