Canada’s elections? Still a dead heat and with no clear majority emerging Colby Cosh has started thinking about a Liberal-Conservative alliance. With proportional representation on the books in most Western European countries this form of coalition government has been a workable solution for years in the old continent. In my native Holland the Christian-Democrats have been in power for more than 100 years (except the period from 1994 to 2002) in one form or the other, a track record not dissimilar to that of the Liberals. To monopolize power in that fashion takes a while but once you have it is relatively easy to maintain: when the wind is blowing from the left you move left and when the wind is blowing from the right... In addition you have the incredible benefit of ensuring that you can become institutionalized: you get to appoint judges, top bureaucrats, diplomats and other officials, so in the end your power base is phenomenal and you can help shape elections. In Canada some judges and notably the CBC are more than happy to pitch in during a campaign to ensure that the Conservatives can not implement their Americanized vision of Canada.

The Dutch Christian-Democrats have, without ever presenting a bold vision for the nation, alternatively teamed up with the Free Market Right or with Labor, whichever formula worked best at the time. Of course, this sometimes resulted in some internal party conflicts, but the last time that got out of hand was in the 1980s when two pacifist radicals were booted out of the party when the Dutch signed up for cruise missile deployment on their soil. The same happens here by the way, Sheila Copps was just too far to the left to continue to be part of the Martin Liberal team. So in essence, I can’t see why this type of coalition building would not work in Canada other than a lack of experience with this highly pragmatic approach.

Damian Penny notes that a hurdle to this might be Stephen Harper’s role. Would he be willing to serve in a government under Paul Martin? It may be hard for Canadians to visualize this, but again my experience leads me to believe that it would not be out of the ordinary for him to sign-up for the role of Deputy Prime-Minister and Minister of Finance if we follow the European template. Thinking out loud, he would be given day-to-day control over budgetary matters and in return offer the Liberals a few things on their wish list. Note that conservative Christian-Democrat Lubbers in the late 1980s offered the finance portfolio in Holland to Labor leader and former union chief Wim Kok, ensuring that this socialist would forever change his views about fiscal policy, which he eventually did. There's a risk for Harper, becoming a taxing and spending quasi-Liberal just because Martin puts you in that position may be too dangerous an option. So the other route open to Harper would be to remain in Parliament and not join cabinet and control policy at a distance as political leader of the Conservatives where he would have the ability to pull the plug on the coalition if it would drift too far to the left. Again this approach has been tested in European settings with some success, it would certainly allow Harper to remain ideologically pure. Definitely a major gamble for him personally, but then with today’s electoral projections on the table it is time to start thinking outside the box.

Unthinkable stuff for Canadians, maybe. But is has been a successful formula in countries after which the Canadians would like to model themselves so much: European social democracies.