(Updates with vote on budget amendment) By Randall Palmer OTTAWA, March 21 (Reuters) - Canada's minority Conservative government has enough opposition support to survive a series of confidence votes on its budget, but talk that there could be a spring election simply will not disappear. The Conservatives were elected in January 2006 and do not have to face the electorate till 2011, but Parliament Hill is abuzz with speculation that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will engineer an early election to try to cash in on a 5 percentage point lead in the polls. Defeating the budget, or another confidence issue, would send Canadians to the polls for the third time in three years. But the separatist Bloc Quebecois has said it will support the government on the three budget votes between Wednesday and next Tuesday, so that will not be the trigger. The budget survived its first test on Wednesday with the Bloc Quebecois and Liberals joining with the government to defeat an amendment sponsored by the New Democratic Party. Environment Minister John Baird evaded repeated questions at a news conference on Wednesday on whether the government would declare its proposed Clean Air Act a matter of confidence if amended too much by the opposition. "We will see," he said. "We will take it one step at a time." The opposition parties are trying to use the government bill to force Ottawa's adherence to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Harper says it will be impossible to make the one-third cut in emissions by 2012 as Kyoto requires without causing huge damage to the economy. One Liberal official in Parliament said all the signs were there that Harper would seize on something by the end of the month to bring his government down. Several leading Conservatives, however, said that though the prime minister addressed a candidates' training camp on the weekend he wanted to continue to govern. "We're not looking for an election," Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said. A cabinet source, who did not want to be identified, said Harper believed his best campaign tool is to show that the Conservatives governed well and every signal from him was that he did not want to force an election. However the source did say it was conceivable that, if the opposition consistently blocked government legislation, or changed it beyond recognition, Harper could lose patience and declare some bill to be a confidence matter. But the source said he saw no sign the prime minister was anywhere close to that. As for the Clean Air Act, the opposition in the committee that is examining it has proposed 52 amendments. "I'm not going to predict what the committee will or will not do," said Baird. One alternative to bringing about an election, if the government decides the Clean Air Act is totally unacceptable, is simply to not bring it before the House of Commons for a vote. (Additional reporting by Louise Egan, and Allan Dowd in Vancouver)
