OTTAWA—The Conservative government is set to topple on a historic non-confidence motion that slams Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government for contempt of Parliament.

The motion to be voted Friday sets the stage for an acrimonious election campaign that formally could begin Saturday, but effectively began Wednesday.

Party leaders staged back-to-back news conferences as they tried to frame whether the coming nationwide debate would be about economic management or ethics and accountability.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said the “ballot question” for voters in the coming campaign would boil down to both.

“Do you trust this Prime Minister with power? Do you trust this Prime Minister to defend your economic interests?”

“We believe the moment has come for Canadians to make a choice here,” Ignatieff said in the Commons foyer.

Ignatieff’s comments came just moments after Prime Minister Stephen Harper said “it is not too late” for the opposition parties to reconsider their decisions to reject his government’s 2011-12 budget, though he flatly ruled out any compromise or amendments to the document.

“Our economy is not a political game,” Harper told reporters. “The global recovery is still fragile.”

Harper reprised the same call for “stability” he issued during the 2008 election campaign. Harper triggered that campaign just as the global economy was sinking into recession.

Now, the Conservative leader is warning Canada’s “strong” recovery “is by no means assured. Many threats remain.”

He listed budget offerings for families, seniors and unemployed Canadians that totalled $2.3 billion in new spending. The budget projects a $29.8 billion deficit for the fiscal year.

Even as he urged opposition parties to pull back from the brink and denounced their “ambition” for an “unnecessary election,” his party unveiled another anti-Ignatieff ad on YouTube and the party’s website. It has also mounted other ads targeting ethnic support in Cantonese, Mandarin and other languages.

The Conservative party was set on election footing starting early in the New Year. Key campaign staff are in place. Party officials have set campaign Twitter accounts in action and the government rushed 11 bills through the final legislative stage of royal assent.

In what was expected to be the final caucus meeting before a campaign, Harper said an emotional goodbye Wednesday to cabinet ministers Stockwell Day, Chuck Strahl and MP John Cummins behind closed doors, bringing some colleagues to tears.

Despite Harper’s 11th-hour pitch to opposition parties to support him, Parliament is unlikely to get a chance to formally pronounce on the Conservative budget.

Procedural manoeuvering by government and opposition MPs Wednesday blocked debate on the federal budget from even starting. That delayed any parliamentary vote on the budget to next week at the earliest.

The government is all but certain to fall before that.

Although NDP leader Jack Layton held out hope that Harper could be persuaded to accept budget amendments, the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois say they will support the Liberal motion of non-confidence Friday.

That motion cites a parliamentary committee report that ruled the government in contempt for its failure to fully document the costs of its F-35 jets purchase, crime bills and corporate tax cuts.

A vote of non-confidence would see the Prime Minister go to the governor general, likely Saturday morning, to seek to dissolve Parliament.

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That would trigger an election campaign. Voting day for Canadians would most likely be May 2.

The Prime Minister charged his political rivals with conspiring to “force an election” despite a budget he claimed met their stated demands.

“When you fall a few days after the budget,” said government House leader John Baird, “I think most Canadians will understand that you’re falling on the budget” no matter what the opposition’s stated reasons.

But Harper promised he would not pre-empt the opposition’s efforts to vote non-confidence by going to the governor general himself to call an election.

“Our priority is the economy and that will continue to be our focus as long as we’re allowed to make that our focus,” said Harper.

Ignatieff said he welcomed a campaign debate over economic choices.

“We will fight them on the economy and we will win on the economy,” the Liberal leader said.

“I will welcome a line-by-line comparison of the Liberal family-care plan and the miserable imitation that has been offered by the Conservative government. You can either buy the knock-off bag or you can buy the real article,” Ignatieff said.

Challenged by a reporter who said most Canadians can only afford knock-offs, Ignatieff replied, “A compassionate government of Canada can afford the best for Canadian families and that’s what we’re saying.”

Harper did not raise the spectre of opposition parties ganging up in a “coalition” against him — his preferred line of attack for the past two years. But the inevitable question of whether his rivals would form a coalition was put to them all in back-to-back news conferences.

Layton and BQ leader Gilles Duceppe openly stated they would not rule it out, while Ignatieff dodged a direct answer.

With files from Susan Delacourt, Joanna Smith

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