Stephen Harper nervous before gala performance with Yo-Yo Ma

OTTAWA- Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was nervous before singing and playing piano in front of a black-tie gala here Saturday night but said his wife convinced him it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he did not want to pass up.

The video of Harper, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and some friends performing the Beatles’ With a Little Help From My Friends at the National Arts Centre was the most popular YouTube file in Canada Monday, and peaked at No. 5 on YouTube’s worldwide most-popular list.

Political analysts and even Harper’s political opponents called the performance "a master stroke" because it showed a side of the prime minister that few have ever seen.

"It’s a little bigger than we thought it would be," Harper said during an interview with a Toronto talk radio station Tuesday morning.

Harper said his wife, Laureen, talked him into doing it. Laureen Harper is the chairwoman of the gala event held in Ottawa Saturday. The gala is a fundraiser for the National Youth and Education Trust, which helps young artists and schools.

"I was quite nervous about doing it because we only had a week to prepare, but in the end I just thought it’s one of these opportunities that’s once-in-a-lifetime and you’ll always wonder if you didn’t do it, so we did it, and people seemed to like it,"Harper said.

The performance came as a new poll shows that more Canadians are warming up to Harper’s Conservative government.

The poll, by the Strategic Counsel, was taken over the weekend and said 41 per cent of Canadians would vote Conservative if an election were held this week. Just 28 per cent would vote Liberal and 14 per cent would vote NDP. The pollster surveyed 1,000 Canadians and said its results are accurate to within 3.1 percentage points.

Asked by the Toronto radio host about the poll and his appetite for an election, Harper said Canadians expect the government to stay in office "through the recession."

Harper defied his own fixed election date law last fall, though, and called a general election as the recession began.

"Iwant to govern," Harper said Tuesday morning. "Part of that is trying to get the other parties to play along at least to some degree. Iwould just encourage them to simply not oppose the government but also put forward alternatives if you don’t like what the government’s doing so we can have a legitimate debate.

"One of the good things about these polls . . . is it’s starting to focus some of the other parties on something other than trying to force an election," Harper said.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has committed his party to bringing down the government and forcing an election at the first opportunity. On the weekend, though, some Quebec Liberal MPs suggested the party was going to assess that strategy on a case-by-case or issue-by-issue basis.