As deadline looms, I am keeping tabs on news coming out of Ottawa. If all goes to plan, by the time this paper has reached your coffee table, Stephen Harper's government will have stopped the second slap shot by the Liberals in the last month. The Liberals are voting no-confidence in the government. The NDP have indicated they will support the government either by voting with it or by skipping the vote.
Minority government brinksmanship is becoming the norm in Canadian politics, and it's the reason we are now constantly hearing about having the fourth election in five years.
Minority Parliaments can work in two ways. We can have co-operation between the parties to advance common goals and compromises along the way, or we can have a Parliament where every single vote could be the last one before the next election.
I can't help but put some blame on the Prime Minister. Stephen Harper has sat in five Parliaments, three of them minorities, and has been the leader of two of them. Has he not, in all those years, learned how to make a Parliament work?
Offering only cursory compromise during budget bills and confidence motions, he has learned to offer just enough of what the NDP wants or just enough of what the Liberals want to prolong the government for one more session.
Meanwhile his party runs campaign-style attack ads directed at the parties he needs support from when no election has been called. Studies have shown these attack ads are effective at two things: winning - and keeping voters away from the polls.
Harper is also on record speechifying about the dangers of Liberal government propped up with "socialists and separatists." He ought to be careful how he uses those terms when those socialists and separatists make up two of the legs on his wobbly stool.
Political parties are like animals or panicked Christmas shoppers - corner them and the will lash out.
Harper is not alone in the blame though. Every party leader ramps up rhetoric when his or her party makes a slight gain in the polls.
An EKOS poll released Oct. 1 shows the Conservatives with a six-point lead over the Liberals for popular support with 36 per cent support nationally. The Liberals are hovering just under 30 per cent. The NDP sits just under 15 per cent while the Greens and Bloc straddle 10 per cent.
This means, if an election were called, we'd likely end up right where we are now, right where we were in 2008, right where we were in 2006 and right where we were in 2004 - with another minority government.
With Canada's demographics the way they are and the centre-left and left votes being split between Liberals, NDP and Greens, and throwing in the Bloc Quebecois as a wild card, minority governments could be a foregone conclusion until one party really distinguishes itself.
Which brings up the dreaded "c word" (that would be "coalition"). Multi-party legislatures around the world have them, but when we flirted with one in January it sparked protest unbecoming of our polite Canadian nature.
The message to parties is: get popular enough to win on your own merit, or learn to work together. We lose voter turnout with just about every election, and your egos and posturing aren't bringing Canadians back.
