I was fantasizing my way through the Throne Speech on Tuesday. It helped to be listening in the car. So the Governor-General is scanning some parts as she reads others. She mutters out the side of her mouth in a way only the PM can hear: “Do you mind if I skip these bits?” He scowls.

A few minutes later, she says: “The Canadian model of constitutional democracy and economic openness combined with social safety nets, equitable wealth creation and sharing across regions has much to offer —” He lurches awake and hisses, “You made that up!” “I did not,” she says, “it’s here.” He says, “Is not. I wrote this, not Tommy Douglas.” So she points and it’s there; that kind of thing happens when you write for others.

I park at the house and, as I get out, the opposition leaders (in my mind) trip into each other as they trade scrums in the foyer of the House. “Look,” says Stéphane to Jack and Gilles, “you both want troops out of Afghanistan and commitment to Kyoto.” They nod. So, he says, let’s agree publicly to bring down the government over that, then go to the G-G and say we’ll form a majority to do things a majority of Canadians want?

“Hey,” says Bob Rae, who’s loitering in the foyer, “that’s what David Peterson and I did in Ontario in 1985. The Conservatives had the most seats but together we had more, so we signed a deal, defeated them, went to the lieutenant-governor with our plan and took power.” “I like it,” says the Greens’ Elizabeth May, eavesdropping, “because it sort of gives us proportional representation by stealth.” Someone else, maybe a historian — I’m not sure how he got there — says they should call it the Great Coalition, like John A. Macdonald in the 1860s.

Reality, by contrast, had a more drag-ass quality. The Bloc and NDP would vote no but couldn’t force an election. The Liberals were opposed but wouldn’t vote no. Everyone postured and nothing happened. In my dreams, the country gets what it wants, leaders look good, the system works and Bob’s your uncle. But it won’t happen. Why? The King-Byng Affair of 1926.

Back then, Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King had lost the third-party support that kept him in power, so he went to governor-general Lord Byng to request an election. The G-G turned him down and asked Conservative leader Arthur Meighen to form a government, which lasted briefly, then fell. The Liberals turned the King-Byng wingding, hardee har, into the big issue of the ensuing campaign and won a majority. Ever since, it’s been assumed that a G-G must call an election if a government falls. The Rae-Peterson scenario doesn’t fit because that Conservative government hadn’t begun to govern before it fell, if you follow the distinction.

Never mind; the point is, none of it is legally binding. It’s parliamentary practice, experts may agree, but things are always changing. Parliamentary procedure is a meandering river, says political science know-it-all Nelson Wiseman, not a rigid code.

What if Arthur Meighen had sustained power, the way a coalition with a clear end date and a program supported by Canadians, might have done. Then the King Liberals couldn’t have run on the issue and used it to win. The precedent would’ve become the opposite: You do call on other parties when a government falls, rather than go to an election.

Fantasy, though, isn’t inevitably better. I just watched Elijah, about Elijah Harper, the native legislator who, all alone, stopped the Meech Lake Accord juggernaut in 1990 by sitting in his place holding an eagle feather and saying No. (It screens tomorrow at the ImagineNATIVE filmfest in Toronto.) That was fresh politics. It even spawned a flipbook in which he waves the feather and mouths “No.” It was a pure case of positive negativity, like the Barthian Nein in theology or Herbert Marcuse’s “power of negative thinking.” That’s the trick: Find a useful, unexpected way to oppose. Something deft and light as a feather.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.