Harper government suddenly in no rush to suspend disgraced senators

OTTAWA – After repeatedly blaming the Liberals for stalling its bid to suspend three disgraced former Conservative senators, the Harper government has decided it’s in no rush after all.

Claude Carignan, the government leader in the Senate, has announced that the upper house will not sit on Friday.

That guarantees there will be no vote until Tuesday at the earliest on the proposal to suspend senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau without pay.

The government could have tried to push a vote through on Friday — just hours before Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scheduled to give a keynote speech to party faithful at the Conservative national convention in Calgary.

But Carignan, whose procedural botch-ups have left many senators scratching their heads, may have feared another snag would wind up delaying the vote until next week in any event.

The government may also have calculated that putting the issue to bed wasn’t worth the risk of giving Duffy another day’s debate in which to drop more bombshell revelations that could overshadow Harper’s speech.