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Canada entered a period of potential minority government when the Bloc Québécois won 54 seats in the 1993 election, but the effect was obscured for a decade by the split on the right that allowed Jean Chrétien's Liberals to win three majority governments. Then, as soon as the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives merged, minority government became the norm, starting with the election of 2004 and confirmed in the elections of 2006 and 2008.

This could go on for a long time. With the NDP winning 20 or 30 seats and the Bloc winning 40 or 50, it's almost impossible for either the Liberals or Conservatives to get a majority. Absent some huge scandal or a major internal collapse by one of the big parties, there just aren't enough seats in play for either to win 155.

Maybe the Bloc will collapse after the retirement of Gilles Duceppe, but then again maybe it won't. It did, after all, survive the retirement of Lucien Bouchard as leader. As Jeffrey Simpson wrote recently, many Quebec voters seem happy in “the comfort zone of being semi-Canadians,” willing to vote for a sovereigntist party as long as it doesn't make genuine progress toward sovereignty.

This new reality makes old expectations about minority government unrealistic. Traditionally, Canadians regarded minority government as a temporary interlude. The governing party wanted to take the first chance to win a majority, and the opposition wanted to take the first chance to bring down the government and get back into power. But if no one can win a majority, we have to come to terms with minority government as a long-term phenomenon.

As long as it espouses the independence of Quebec, the Bloc is not an acceptable partner in the government of Canada. That leaves only two plausible ways to form a government: Liberal-NDP co-operation, or Conservative-Liberal co-operation. (The Conservatives and NDP are too far apart to co-operate systematically.) Liberal-NDP co-operation could take the guise of a formal coalition in which the NDP enters the cabinet, or an accord in which the NDP supports the Liberals in government. Conservative-Liberal co-operation, on the other hand, is likely to remain tacit. One party governs while the other, playing the role of Official Opposition, supports the government's main initiatives, thereby keeping it in power.

Except for a few months in 2005 when Paul Martin's Liberals relied on NDP support, Canadian government for the past five years has been a condominium project of the two big parties. The NDP and Bloc can criticize Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff for propping up the Conservative government, but that is the only realistic way of getting anything done in Parliament.

Against that backdrop, the recent agreement between Mr. Ignatieff and Stephen Harper to study employment insurance over the summer is an important development in power-sharing. For the first time, the Conservatives will allow the Liberals to help devise policy, while the Liberals will have to accept some responsibility for the outcome if they have had input into the formulation.

Power-sharing is not a new idea. It happens all the time in the United States, where most legislation is developed and passed by a combination of Democrats and Republicans. It happens in France when one party controls the presidency and another party controls the National Assembly. It is happening now under Angela Merkel in Germany, where the two major parties are partners in a so-called Grosse Koalition (Grand Coalition).

To be sure, power-sharing has not been the norm in the British parliamentary tradition as long as one party can win a majority, but it has occurred in exceptional times, such as in Great Britain and the Dominions during the First World War. The present is one of those exceptional times in Canada.

Five years of minority government, with no end in sight, is building up a backlog of unaddressed issues. To take just one example, Canada Post's business model is being undercut by advances in information technology, and legislative change is necessary. Probably either the Liberals or the Conservatives would deal with Canada Post if they had a majority, but will a minority Parliament ever get around to doing what needs to be done before it once again has to go to the polls?

Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff deserve credit for coming together to avoid a pointless election. Let's hope they can continue in this vein to make Parliament work in a time of long-term minority government.

Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager.