How long a minority government in Canada just might last will start to be revealed today (January 27) as MPs from across the country are back in the House of Commons for the resumption of parliament.  

The governing Liberals were left in a minority position after the election in October and will need the support of one or more parties to let them move their agenda for Canada ahead.  Banff-Airdrie Conservative MP Blake Richards says it remains to be seen just how long the government can tiptoe through the political minefield.

"In all honesty, I'm kind of waiting on pins and needles on it because I just don't have a sense of how the Trudeau government plans to conduct themselves in a minority parliament.  I thought we'd get some sense in the week and a half that we were in Ottawa prior to Christmas but even with the Throne Speech, here was no sense of their direction.  They have an opportunity to pull the country together by working with everybody and I hope they'll do that but right now I'm pretty anxiously awaiting to see how it will go."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that the top priorities for the government were getting legislation passed to ratify the new North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, and getting a Firearms Ban put into place to stiffen gun control in Canada.  Richards said the Conservatives will need to be certain that no sectors of Canada's economy will be hurt by the free trade agreement before deciding to support it.

"I know when they met with some of our critics on the trade file, there were some questions that we had about how it would affect certain sectors of the economy, agriculture, automobiles, and aluminum, and a few other key sectors and we haven't received answers to those questions yet.  The trade relationship with the U.S. is critical so we want to make sure that we can move forward if at all possible, but, having said that, we need to make sure we've done our due diligence before we make any decisions."

Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote a letter to the opposition party leaders that urged them to work together to get the legislation for the new agreement passed.  

Richards doesn't have any hesitation about how he feels about gun restrictions.  He said a firearms ban is the wrong approach to making Canada safer.

"If they want to deal with gun crime, I believe they need to get tough on criminals that are misusing guns.  I believe they need to focus on measures that will deal with gangs, and organized crime and those who are illegally using firearms.  I don't really think something that is going to target law-abiding citizens is going to change that.  This is completely the wrong way to approach gun crime."

At the end of the day, Richards feels the direction and tone that the Liberals take will decide whether or not the government can make headway with a minority, or if we'll be heading back to the polls in fairly short order.  

"It's going to take one or more of the parties to come on board.  They can try to work out an arrangement with one of the parties.  They can try to work on a case by case basis with various parties or they can try to work on a collaborative fashion and try to bring everybody together by consensus.  There's a lot of ways they can approach this and I think until we see what kind of direction they take in terms of the approach, it's really hard to say how long the parliament will last."