There are clusters of reasons for why we’re in minority government in Ottawa. The most compelling is that the electorate has become a lot more sophisticated; that we like it when the will of Parliament is closely aligned with the will of the majority; we like it that minority government keeps our politicos’ hubris and bravado in check; we like it when our parties are more alert to what we think; and we like to see our Members working.

Alternatively, minority government could be the expression of the apparently low level of trust we have these days in parties and party leaders. We’re loathe to trust the Conservatives with a majority after we’ve seen their lack of depth, because they appear willing to break promises, and while we’re still not quite sure where they really wish to take us.

Neither are we prepared to trust team Liberal with a majority, even if they seem deeper in talent. We’re not sure they’ve been benched long enough to be ready to play a disciplined game. Meanwhile Jack Layton continues to swing at every pitch in the search for the one deep one over the centre field wall, rather to just hit to get on base, the Greens long just to be on the bench, and the Bloc are negotiating a new league with the players’ association.

Public policy too demanding?

A third cluster of reasons for our minority government might be that the public policy decisions facing us are just too complex to admit a clear and confident majoritarian consensus. The major issues in public policy today appear confusing and difficult.

Is our financial and human sacrifice in Afghanistan actually doing much long-term good, even when we’re not losing lives? How many billions should be spent on retooling Canada’s military; for what sorts of hardware; for which long-term goals and roles; and from which competing priorities should this money be moved?

What sorts of policies will be effective in realizing First Nations’ a lasting justice? How can American economic imperatives be moderated in our public interest? And if industry is melting down, with what can we replace it and what would this do to the futures of blue-collar workers? What sort of tax, social and development policies would effectively close the rapidly widening gap in the lives between the top and bottom 20 per cent of income-earning families?

These aren’t easy questions for parties or concerned citizens. Perhaps we’re happy with minority government simply because we believe that none of the parties have answers we’re prepared fully to endorse.

If so, then until such time as the parties put together a coherent platform that first analyzes and then addresses these questions, we may be best just to let them work in a minority’s “four heads are better than one” deliberative arena.

The Neo-Con’s solution

However, this conclusion doesn’t appear to appeal to the Conservatives. Their problem is they had a five-plank platform that was barely enough to keep their more doctrinaire supporters happy without seeming as extreme as to frighten the rest of us.

They’ve more or less legislated on each of the planks, but not all that effectively, either as public policy or in enhancing their electoral prospects. They like to be in charge, not in consultation; they like to fight, not to debate.

They appear not to have a second platform or, if they do, they’re not willing to share it. They’re increasingly making decisions on the fly, many of which seem to be disconnected from what the electorate believes to be important. And they sense that if they wait much more than a year, blaming the Liberals won’t work any longer as an election strategy.

Their solution seems to be to make minority government so unworkable that the electorate would allow them to dissolve Parliament and hand them a majority out of pure frustration. Their “how-to book” of Parliamentary clogs, leaked recently, was written to this end and stands as a democratically disappointing and surprisingly inept Plan B.

The Conservatives have again underestimated our ability to think critically and our intolerance at being manipulated. And they’ve underestimated the press’s willingness to resist being muffled.

Or perhaps the Calgary School is not nearly as smart or politically adroit as they’ve been claimed to be, and as they’ve convinced themselves they are.