Here's another coalition scenario the four party leaders didn't fully explore during their televised debates last week: Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe.
Actually, Mr. Duceppe acknowledged this improbable option, but only in denial - the next prime minister, he said, wouldn't be him. Given one particular election result, though, circumstances could change. Indeed, in this instance, constitutional precedent might compel Governor-General David Johnston to ask the separatist leader to form a national government. Who's to know Mr. Duceppe's response?
Assume that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper fails to win a majority of the 308 parliamentary seats but that he still holds the most seats. In this case, he would expect the Governor-General to ask him to form a new government. Mr. Harper would convene Canada's 41st Parliament and, within days, retable the budget his government first tabled in March.
Assume that the three opposition parties combine once again, repudiate the budget and bring down the government. Mr. Harper could ask the Governor-General to dissolve this briefest of Parliaments in its very first days - but probably wouldn't. The country wouldn't tolerate back-to-back federal elections in a single springtime. The Governor-General would almost certainly invite the Leader of the Official Opposition to take a turn at forming a government with the support of the other opposition parties.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff himself apparently regards this simple sequence of events as his best shot at primus inter pares. Recall his words from the first debate: "If you get more seats than any other party, you get to try first to gain the confidence of the House."
Try first. Translation: Mr. Harper will win more seats and must be accorded first whack. But Mr. Ignatieff, supported by the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, will vote him down. Mr. Ignatieff then gets to "try second." But he would almost certainly require a formal coalition - something of legal force. In British parliamentary tradition, for example, the Governor-General might require the Bloc and the NDP "to accept the whip" of an Ignatieff government.
But Mr. Ignatieff must first become Leader of the Official Opposition, a position he gains only if he wins more seats on May 2 than any of the other opposition parties - more seats, to be precise, than Mr. Duceppe. This is not a prediction but a fact: Mr. Ignatieff could lose seats on May 2.
In the past six elections, the Bloc won more than 50 seats three times: 54 in 1993; 54 in 2004; and 51 in 2006. Mr. Ignatieff probably needs 60 seats to ensure that he retains his position as Leader of the Official Opposition.
Yet, the Liberals have failed twice to win 50 seats since the Second World War: in 1958, when they won 49; and in 1984, when they won 40. At dissolution, they held 77. Any significant Liberal slippage could turn the Bloc into the Official Opposition - exactly as it was from 1993 to 1997 during a Liberal majority government.
The election could produce a Bloc-friendly result in a number of ways. For example, the Bloc could win 60 seats, the Liberals 58 seats, the NDP 40 seats and the Conservatives 150 seats, five short of a majority. The result would surely provoke the greatest political crisis in this country since 1926, when the governor-general (Lord Byng) refused Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King's request that he dissolve Parliament and call an election, insisting that Conservative leader Arthur Meighen, the leader of the Official Opposition, be invited first to form a government.
If Mr. Duceppe were the leader of the Official Opposition, the Governor-General would be obliged to turn to him as the "second try" party in the House. On what grounds could he not? Mr. Duceppe might well decline the invitation. But the prospect of accepting it would be enormously tempting - if only for the historic irony.
Mr. Ignatieff could escape his reliance on the Bloc only by first gaining, in alliance with the NDP, the absolute security of 155 seats: 42 more than the two parties held at dissolution. The contribution of the NDP to this result would determine precisely how many cabinet posts Mr. Ignatieff would need to give to NDP Leader Jack Layton.