OTTAWA -- In case of parliamentary gridlock, turn left. Canadians awake to their first minority government in 25 years, a Commons presided over by Paul Martin's chastened Liberals with the NDP as co-pilot.

It seems a stunning turnabout for an election that 10 days ago projected the possibility of the most conservative federal government in national memory.

More stunning still is Martin could actually celebrate the modest victory, given widespread predictions only months ago that the Liberals were en route to an historic majority of more than 200 seats.

In a campaign that was all about fear and loathing -- fear of Stephen Harper's Conservatives, loathing for the lackadaisical Liberals -- the fear factor apparently won out.

It's safe to say no party captured the imagination of the electorate.

With the Bloc and the New Democrats acting as the de facto legislative gatekeepers, leftist social democrats could exert more influence in Parliament than at any time since the Progressives of the 1920s.

Yet under the laws of diminished expectations, Conservative Harper could be called a winner, even if his political ideology was apparently rejected.

For Martin, snatching a minority from the jaws of defeat may not feel so much like victory in the days ahead, even if election night proved sweet.

Martin's website once boasted he would "rewrite Canadian history books by sweeping into the House of Commons with 250 seats in the next election -- beating all existing records for majority government."

Now he'll have to deal with a solid Bloc presence in Quebec once again splitting the country.

And the man who promised to end Western alienation will have to assuage a freshly aggrieved Prairie Conservative heartland while holding hands with Jack Layton of the New Democrats.

That too, marks a quantum leap from six months ago, when Martin was dismissing Layton's party as "NDP-lite."

"The fact is we're really not going to pay much attention to what they're saying," Martin said in one December interview shortly after becoming prime minister.

Now, Martin will have to pay a great deal of attention.

Layton raised the NDP's popular vote dramatically, which bodes well for the party under new election financing rules that base public subsidies on vote counts.

The split parliament could be a foretaste of things to come.

There are provincial movements afoot in B.C., New Brunswick and P.E.I., toward a system of proportional representation and three of the four parties in the Commons -- Liberals excepted -- have supported such an electoral change in the recent past.

The common knock on proportional representation is that it tends to scatter the vote and produce minority governments that require formal inter-party coalitions.

Both the Liberals and Conservatives have indicated they're not interested in formal deals to prop up a government.

Both appear to be banking on empty party coffers and a tired, grumpy electorate to keep the Commons limping along in the short term without a confidence vote bringing down the House and sending Canadians back to the polls.

© Copyright 2004 The London Free Press

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