The Conservatives have led a minority government in Parliament for five years, and the three other parliamentary parties (Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois) decided to join in a vote of no confidence last month. But the resulting campaign has not lighted fires under anyone, especially the electorate.

Jack Layton, the happy warrior of the New Democratic Party (NDP), has taken to positioning his admirers behind him at public appearances to create the illusion of a crowd. But the unsporting reporters then turn the cameras around to show nobody but reporters on the "audience" side.

One watches Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, former Harvard professor, his Boris Karloff eyebrows bouncing up and down, get off a campaign bus and wave wildly to a tiny knot of party loyalists. Everyone else on the street seems to be heading to the store.

National debates in English and French this week were unexciting and inconclusive. Everyone "did what he had to do," said expert observers, which means, on balance, that incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative, probably benefited most. Harper's Tories seem prepared to gain the most seats again, though maybe not a majority. Harper warns of a "coalition" of the other three parties, though the Liberals and NDP almost surely would avoid allying openly with the nominally sovereignist Bloc Quebecois--the kiss of death in the "ROC" (Rest of Canada).

There is a chance that the Conservatives, who poll over 40 percent, will get a majority of seats and complete their long progress back from huge defeats in the 1990s. It also is possible that they will get only the same sized plurality they possess now, but still more seats than any other party. That could result in another Harper-led minority government, which will frustrate just about everyone.

But there are a couple of other options. One, despite all, is the grand "anyone but the Tories" coalition that Harper warns about--the Liberals, NDP and the Bloc.

But another theoretical possibility is that the Liberals and NDP could use Bloc support to form a government, but then operate it without the Bloc's participation. Britain presently has a two party coalition, but it is made up of the number one winning party in the last election, the Conservatives, combined with the number three winners, the Liberal Party. Together they constitute a majority in the British House of Commons. That coalition has proven a surprisingly stable one, so far. But a minority government of losers? How stable is that?

Regardless, if the Liberals and NDP wind up in any coalition after this election the chances increase for an eventual formal merger of the two left of center parties, something an outsider from the U.S. might see as inevitable anyhow. The other result probably would be a diminution of the power of the Bloc Quebecois, a party created only twenty years ago for the purpose of separating Quebec from the ROC. That separation didn't succeed and the issue isn't even being discussed by the Bloc itself this year, giving rise to the question: What, other than a political clique and a cultural sentiment, is the federal Bloc Quebecois?

Meanwhile it's springtime in the Rockies, hockey is the subject that most interests the average Canadian, the "Loonie" (Canadian) dollar is stronger than its U.S. counterpart, housing prices remain stable and copious oil and gas revenues from Alberta flow into federal coffers. While "Conservative" may not describe the ideology of Canadians, it may describe their temperamental preference just now to avoid major change.

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