Ottawa: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper won opposition backing to extend a military mission in Afghanistan for two more years, the first test of his minority government since taking power in February.
A government motion to extend the mission to 2009 was passed by a vote of 149 to 145 following six hours of debate in the House of Commons in Ottawa last night. Harper, whose Conservative Party is 29 seats short of a majority, was backed by about a quarter of the opposition Liberal Party, including leader Bill Graham.
``I expect that all the members of Parliament and all Canadians will rally behind the troops in their mission from this point onward,’’ Harper told reporters following the vote.
Harper, 47, wants to push his more controversial measures through Parliament early in his mandate, taking advantage of a reluctance by the Liberals and other opposition parties to force new elections. Minority governments typically last 18 months in Canada.
``If you are going to do some things that could cause controversy, get it all out of the way first thing,’’ said pollster John Wright, a senior vice-president of Ipsos-Reid in Toronto.
Harper is also trying to increase Canada’s influence abroad and improve relations with U.S. President George W. Bush, who is tying to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Canada is divided on the Afghanistan deployment, with opposition heaviest in the French-speaking province of Quebec where Harper needs to score more seats to win a majority in the next election.
Fifty percent of Canadians support keeping the mission ``as long as it takes,’’ while 46 percent are opposed to the deployment, according to a poll by Ipsos in March. More than 60 percent of Quebeckers opposed the mission.
The vote was symbolic, and would not bind Harper to abandon the mission, which was scheduled to end in February 2007. Harper said earlier in the day he would extend the mission by one year even if he lost the vote.
Canada has about 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, and first sent troops there following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
At least 17 Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan, including Capt. Nichola Goddard, a female soldier who was killed in a firefight near Kandahar yesterday. That’s the highest death toll for the country in a single armed conflict since the Korean War. The Polaris Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank, has estimated the Canadian government has spent more than C$4 billion ($3.6 billion) on military operations related to Afghanistan since 2001.
Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party, said his members didn’t support the motion because lawmakers haven’t been given enough details of what the mission would entail, nor enough time to debate. The ruling Conservatives didn’t notify Parliament of the vote until yesterday.
``The wrong mission has been engaged in for an extensive period of time without anywhere near adequate debate or the questions being answered,’’ Layton told reporters.
A loss yesterday would have been the second political defeat in two days for Harper. A parliamentary committee on May 16 rejected his nomination for the top job of a new commission meant to vet public appointments. To retaliate, Harper scrapped the commission.
The Conservatives hold 125 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. | 
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