When MPs return to their assigned seats in the House of Commons chamber next week, they won’t just be kicking off the sixth sitting week of the year, but hitting the final stretch of the current supply cycle.

As per longstanding parliamentary protocols, the cycle is set to wrap up on Mar. 26, which is also the deadline to either approve — or, alternatively, reject — the billions of dollars in proposed expenditures laid out in the supplementary estimates and interim supply bill.

In fact, barring a sudden programming change, the procedural stage has been set for the winter supply cycle to wind down two days ahead of schedule, as the government has tentatively set aside Mar. 24 as the seventh and final opposition day, which, by tradition, takes place immediately before those make-or-break votes on the estimates.

Depending on how the chamber chooses to proceed, those votes can be disposed of within a few minutes or drag on for hours or even days if at least one party is sufficiently determined to prolong the process by insisting that every question be decided via recorded division.

Votes on the estimates — or, to use the appropriate procedural lingo, supply —  are also traditionally considered to be questions of confidence. That’s why during previous minority go-rounds, they were all but guaranteed to trigger at least one round of speculation over whether the government would be able to cobble together enough cross-aisle support to survive.

In fact, that’s what happened last June, when there was a brief flurry of number-crunching during the lead-up to the inaugural estimates vote under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s then-newly-reinstalled Liberal minority. Although even at the time, it seemed distinctly unlikely that the opposition parties were prepared to force Canadians back to the ballot box less than two months after the last election.

In the end, it was downright anticlimactic: Team Carney sailed through its first supply-related confidence test with a comfortable margin of victory, courtesy of the Bloc Québécois, as well as the seven New Democrats and lone Green MP Elizabeth May, all of whom voted with the government.

Fast forward to last December, and the next batch of estimates didn’t even make it to a vote, but were adopted on division, the standard procedural shorthand to ensure the record reflects that the decision wasn’t unanimous without identifying who, exactly, was opposed.

So far, there’s in indication of whether the current estimates package —  which includes $5.4 billion in proposed new spending as well as $86 billion in interim supply to cover overall program and operating costs until the main estimates are approved in June — will actually be put to a vote, or simply allowed to pass ‘on division’ once again.

If it does, even after adding three former opposition members to their caucus lineup, the Liberals may still need the support of at least one opposition member — or, alternately, two opposition members to sit out the vote — to prevail, although those numbers could shift slightly depending on the actual turnout.

Even so, it’s still hard to imagine a scenario where any of the opposition parties would be prepared to roll the dice on a snap election — particularly the New Democrats, whose supporters are slated to descend on Winnipeg the following weekend to choose a new leader, although it’s not clear that there’s much enthusiasm to head back out on the hustings amongst members of the Conservatives or the Bloc Québécois, either.

In fact, with just four sitting days on deck before the chamber powers down for the two-week Easter break, the real time crunch for the government may be the final phase of what has turned to a protracted battle to get Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s bid to expand the federal anti-hate crime laws to the legislative finish line.

After a weeks-long standoff at the justice committee — which, as chronicled by iPolitics, ultimately led the Liberals to strike a deal with the Bloc Québécois to break the deadlock over clause-by-review by adding a new provision to remove religious freedom as a catch-all defence — the bill finally made it back to the main parliamentary stage last week.

Under the terms of the House order adopted earlier this month, just two more sitting days have been allotted for report stage and third reading. That could put it on track to go to a vote as early as Wednesday afternoon.

Although with the Conservatives still adamantly opposed to measures that they claim would restrict freedom of speech, they may not be prepared to let it proceed to a final vote without putting up one final procedural fight, particularly when even a short delay could be enough to keep the bill in limbo until regular House business resumes in April.

As for the rest of the spring sitting, while most of the bills that have been at the top of the government’s to-do list since last fall are now working their way through the Senate, there are still a few high-priority items on the agenda.

These include a suite of proposed criminal justice measures targeting gender-based violence and court delays and boosting child protection laws, legislation to overhaul the federal cyber security regime and the newly tabled bill to establish new rules on lawful access, along with the border security bill initially passed by the House of Commons in December, which is now back on the docket after undergoing a rewrite in the Senate.

One thing that isn’t on the parliamentary calendar, however, is a budget speech — an annual tradition that, up until last year, was a regular feature of the spring sitting that will now take place in the fall, although there may be a fiscal update before the chamber shuts down for the summer.

There will also be at least one more round of estimates votes — which, depending on how the next few months, not to mention the trio of byelections on April 13 play out, could see a dramatic return to the will-they-or-won’t-they cliffhangers of minority parliaments past.

As for those byelections, stay tuned to iPolitics on April 13 for our liveblog coverage.