Welcomed truce

Hooray, hooray, Canadians have been spared a summer election.
Before we get too hoarse from cheering, however, let’s call a spade a spade. We’ve avoided a fourth trip to the polls in just five years not because Canadians didn’t want an election, but because neither the Liberals or the Conservatives were certain they could win it.
You can bet if the Grits were soaring in the polls, had all their candidates in place, and boasted a brimming “war chest,” Mr. Ignatieff would not have thought twice about pulling the plug on Prime Minister Harper’s minority government during a vote on supplementary budget estimates scheduled for this Friday night in the House of Commons.
By the same token, if the Tories weren’t sinking in the polls but instead had that annoyingly elusive majority government within their grasp, Mr. Harper would not have allowed Mr. Ignatieff to wrest some “concessions,” albeit minor ones, in order to save face and live to plot his downfall another day.
Ahh, politics.
Clearly we’re getting both the best—and worst—of what a minority Parliament offers. On the one hand, the Tories are forced to work with the opposition parties in order to stay in power, and with that comes a degree of co-operation and compromise which, ideally, translates into effective legislation and policies created in the best interest of all Canadians.
The downside, of course, given the ever-present possibility of a snap election, is the bombastic rhetoric and partisan attacks that accompany every debate. And that, unfortunately, only serves to turn voters off. After all, Canadians can only take the Liberals constantly crying wolf so much while also watching the Tories routinely goading the opposition as far as possible without actually triggering a campaign.
It’s no wonder fewer and fewer people are bothering to cast ballots these days.
Then again, that’s how our system works. And as long as this current electoral stalemate between the two main parties exists, with neither one able to capture a majority, we can expect more of the same—starting in the fall.
But hey, at least we have a few months’ reprieve from listening to a broken record. And that is something to celebrate.