The first year of a CPC-NDP informal alliance

Babble on.

James Bow, one of the most reasonable pundits in the entire Canadian blogosphere, has outlined how cats and dogs might lie together to make this next parliament work - at least for the first year.

It is definitely worth reading in its entirety.

The one area where I'd disagree with James is on Democratic Reform. I think many of the decision-makers in the CPC hope one day to form a majority government in Canada, and I can't see them getting past that to support a PR reform package. They'll tolerate minority parliaments, but I'm guessing they won't endorse perpetual minority parliaments.

I think a more probable area of cooperation is the empowerment of parliamentary committees. To be honest, this is long overdue anyhow. I'd argue that the single biggest threat to the legitimacy of Canadian federal politics isn't our first-past-the-post electoral system, it's the unholy amount of power currently wielded by the PMO. If the Dippers can see that, we might get the democratic renewal process well on its way in 2006.

Babble off.