For reasons known only to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and his close advisors, the country is about to be plunged into its fourth election in five years. Ignatieff, of course, declared last week that the "time is up" for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government. "The Liberal party cannot support this government any longer. We will hold Stephen Harper to account. We will oppose his government in Parliament."

This is the same Michael Ignatieff who,in June, pooh-poohed calls from the NDP to topple the government, saying then that Canadians are in no mood for an election. Now, according to him, we can hardly wait. Arithmetic being what it is, Ignatieff can't topple the Tories by himself. He needs help from the NDP AND the Bloc Quebecois. That's because the Tories have 143 seats - just a dozen shy of a majority - while the Liberals have 77, the Bloc, 48, and the NDP, 36.

The Bloc - which promotes Quebec separatism and runs only in that province - are likely in as strong a position to hold their own as anybody is. And since it's unlikely they'd want to support Harper - or any federalist party, for that matter - Ignatieff may be able to count on their support. NDP Leader Jack Layton has been talking tough since the last election, attacking the Liberals for propping up the Tories, but with his poll numbers down, and his personal popularity not exactly soaring, it's not a given that he'll want to head into a campaign at the moment.

But let's suppose he does. Then the question becomes what has changed in less than two months in Ignatieff's view that warrants another election?

According to the Liberals, Harper has been "irresponsible" in handling the ongoing global fiscal crisis. Liberals unveiled a series of election-type television commercials this week trying to make the case that Ignatieff would trump Harper in dealing with our problems. Typically, alas, Ignatieff restricts himself to telling us that Harper isn't doing the job right, while studiously avoiding any specifics about just what - if anything - he would do differently.

Unfortunately for Ignatieff, the truth is that if anything has changed since June - when he said we didn't need an election - the economy has improved dramatically. Whether this can be credited to Harper is another question - although if Liberals are going to blame him for a world-wide economy downturn, they have to credit him when it improves. But the latest employment statistics, while not overwhelming, show that for the first time in a long time the number of jobs actually increased in Canada.

According to most economic forecasts, in fact, the economic outlook for the rest of this year looks even more promising.

Ignatieff is highly critical of Harper's current deficit - as are fiscal conservatives such as your correspondent - but apparently they forget, or want you to forget, that not long ago they were promoting an unholy coalition pact with the NDP, Bloc and themselves to essentially overturn the results of the last election because, they screamed, Harper wasn't prepared to spend enough of your money on recovery projects.

So which is it? Is he a bad prime minister because he is more fiscally responsible than Ignatieff would be? Or is he a bad prime minister because he's not fiscally responsible enough? Either way, it's a tough question for Ignatieff to get around, given his own previous stances on the subject. Remember, the last election was less than a year ago - Oct. 14 for those of you keeping score - and every political poll shows that Canadians are not anxious to have another one any time soon.

The Tory claim that an election now would hurt the ongoing recovery, while self-serving for them, actually makes a lot of sense as well.

Here's a prediction. Despite the fact that polls have generally shown that the Tories and Liberals are fairly even in public esteem - which is to say, not particularly high - Ignatieff is making a terrible tactical blunder in hoping to force an election nobody wants or needs, particularly in the absence of any overriding issue which could justify it.

What Ignatieff's unadulterated lust for power above all else may do, however, is create a political backlash against him to the point that voters say to themselves that "enough is enough" and opt for a majority so that we can have some stability in Ottawa. And with Harper just 12 shy of a majority - compared to Ignatieff's need to double his seat total - surely the odds of hitting majority status favour Harper.

Who knows, perhaps Ignatieff really is more anxious than we know to get out of Ottawa and head back south to his cushy teaching job at Harvard, where he can pontificate without having to convince anybody that he's a genius.