Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells makes a curious but plainly accurate observation over at his blog Inkless Wells, regarding the recently tabled federal budget:

Last spring I wrote a column arguing, tongue in cheek, that Liberals and Conservatives were already running a coalition government. Andrew [Coyne] wrote a column more recently, suggesting more seriously that they give such a thing a try. This budget is clearly designed to form the basis for a Conservative-Liberal coalition de facto.

So we Canadians will probably end up with a coalition, just not the one everyone had been either hoping for, fearing, or giggling about. The thing is, that’s pretty much the government we’ve been requesting, and getting (and giggling about), for the past quarter century.

From the deficit-loving GST chargers in the Progressive Conservative government of “Canada’s greenest Prime Minister” (that’s Brian Mulroney), through the Reform-copying cost cutters of the Chrétien-Martin Liberal years, Canada has been consistently governed by red Tories and blue Grits. Sure, they might strike more extreme poses during their various campaigns, but our leaders have always weeble-wobbled back to the centre right once they attained power.

Stephen Harper, with his last minority, tried to govern like a straight-up Conservative by bullying the cash-poor opposition parties into acquiescence, which worked until he got fed up with the effort and called an election.

What did the voters tell our politicians at the polls? For the second election in a row, Canadians announced (with our votes, since few of us were prepared to say the words out loud) that we actually do want, that we demand, a Conservative/Liberal coalition. We want said coalition to govern this country in pretty much the same way it has been governed since the birth of the Macintosh computer or, if you prefer, Avril Lavigne.

Now that we seem to be back on track towards a government of Conberal Libservatives (Liberative Conserverals?), let us never again speak of this great national consensus. It takes all the fun out of politics.