By Lloyd Mackey

I COULD NOT have said it better myself.

Tom Flanagan, sometime advisor to the prime minister and long time political science professor at the University of Calgary, asked a question in a mid-July Globe and Mail opinion piece.

That question was: "What would power-sharing look like?"

He posed his query after several hundred words examining whether we are looking forward to a fairly extended period of minority government before facing another election.

The whole piece is worth a read. A search using the words 'Flanagan' and 'power-sharing' on the Globe and Mail website should produce it.

I will use this week's OttawaWatch to highlight Flanagan's conclusions, along with some observations of my own.

The good professor points out that a fair amount of quality work has been done in the present Parliament -- despite what he describes as a "mismatch between its majoritarian political culture and the reality of minority government."

He continues: "Government ... can't move [legislation] forward in normal fashion through committee discussion and votes on the floor of the House. Instead of just marshalling a voting majority, it has to resort to all sorts of tactical expedients: threatening an election, bundling other measures together with the budget, playing off the opposition parties against each other or luring dissident elements within those parties to defy their own leadership.

"The opposition parties, meanwhile, play their own games. [Among other things] they turn parliamentary committees into kangaroo courts, recklessly pursuing personal investigations for which they have neither training nor resources."

Flanagan, by implication, gives short shrift to the Harper-haters, who love to portray him as a bully or anti-democrat. He suggests the prime minister "can be a fierce partisan, but he also has remarkable diplomatic skills."

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He cites the Alliance-Conservative merger, and the leadership Harper gave in getting the G8 and G20 nations to support deficit reduction. Then he urges his old advisee to turn his diplomatic talents toward Parliament.

Understandably, Flanagan says there would need to be a response from the other side. In a minority Parliament, he suggests, the official opposition, particularly, is "in effect, part of the government, because no legislation can pass without their support."

Then comes his power-sharing question - and the answers:

"More quiet meetings among leaders or their delegates. Government invitations to opposition parties to contribute to drafting legislation. Amendments moved in good faith, not just to obstruct. Honourable compromises. Agreements that are actually kept. Legislation that is widely-supported.

"Not utopia, but better than what we have now."

My own observation is that there have been some fair signs that many on both the government and opposition benches have been behaving as Flanagan would wish them to. Harper has led the way, often, by answering questions in a tone that suggests he actually understands the biblical suggestion that "a soft answer turns away wrath." And some journalists are resisting the temptation to attack the collaborators with broad brushes.

The fall will bring the opportunity to finesse Flanagan's above-cited power-sharing answers - perhaps to the point of stretching this Parliament's life another year or two, with some fair accomplishments to boot.

To some, it may be boring. But to the future politicians among the students who watch the proceedings from the parliamentary galleries, it could be both enlightening and encouraging.

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

August 6/2010