HALIFAX –Canadians are sending a message to future prime ministers about overstepping their powers, says Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who is promising that he would not run roughshod over Parliament.

Facing numerous questions about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's shutdown of Parliament during two sessions with students in Nova Scotia today, Ignatieff said he would "respect the institutions that contain my powers."

While he said he wouldn't rule out using the prorogation power, the Liberal leader said he's been heartened by Canadians' outcry against Harper's shutdown, which follows on the heels of him using the proroguing power a year ago as well.

"This experience of doing it twice in one year teaches us that there are really serious constitutional issues involved," Ignatieff said as he kicked off a week-long tour of Canadian campuses, at the same time his party was unleashing a wave of attack ads to protest against the parliamentary shutdown.

"You've got to keep that balance in which the prime minister serves Parliament, rather than Parliament serving the prime minister."

In the face of what appears to be rising opposition to the shutdown of Parliament until March 3, Ignatieff says Liberals are taking their cues from the public — and the doubts Canadians have been expressing about Harper's decision to close Parliament down until after the Olympics.

"We're trying to ask in those ads the questions Canadians want answered: why's he doing this?" Ignatieff said this morning, as he kicked off a national campus tour in Halifax, on the same day that Liberal ads have also hit the radio airwaves and print outlets across Canada.

The ads accuse Harper of closing Parliament because of "self-interest" and allege that it's part of a cover-up by the Conservative government to avoid accountability on some controversial issues dogging Harper before the House of Commons adjourned for the Christmas holiday.

"We believe he's shutting it down to avoid tough questions on Afghanistan and the detainee issue; tough questions on (the climate change summit in) Copenhagen, on the environment," Ignatieff said.

Ignatieff denies the Liberals are adopting the Conservatives' negative-ad strategies, saying that the Liberal ads are based on sentiment that's already simmering in the Canadian public.

"This public debate started before us and we're taking part," Ignatieff said, citing the Facebook-based protest that has now garnered more than 145,000 members, as well as the numerous editorials and commentary across the country that have been slamming Harper for the parliamentary shutdown.

"I don't need to take any lessons in positive politics from Stephen Harper," Ignatieff told reporters. "He's the master of the negative stuff."

During his hour-long chat with students this morning at the Nova Scotia Community College in Dartmouth, Ignatieff said that new social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are important tools for politicians in this day and age, but he also said that they are only tools — that they can only be useful if politicians have something valuable to communicate through them.

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