By Lloyd Mackey

IN a moment, I will have some comments on a Canadian connection to last week's British election. Firstly, there is some housekeeping in followup to my introduction, last week, of the Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care.

Since then, I have been able to interview NDPer Joe Comartin and Conservative Harold Albrecht. Comartin is the chair of the new cross-party group: It was started in the aftermath of Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde's unsuccessful attempt to get an assisted suicide bill through the House of Commons. I hope to have the results of those interviews in next week's OttawaWatch.

One other point: I had identified Guelph Liberal MP Frank Valeriote as a serious Catholic. Indeed, he has given long leadership to the Catholic school board in the Guelph area.

A member of Lakeside Bible Church -- a Guelph megachurch which grew out of the Christian Brethren tradition -- noted that while I was correct with respect to Valeriote's Catholic connections, the MP and his family actually attend Lakeside.

One of the points of the introduction of this cross-party group to readers will be to draw the faith-political links which, I would submit, will contribute something to its future success.

The above brings me to the subject of a keynote speaker at the 2009 Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) conference in Ottawa. IMFC is a five year old think tank and research group developed by -- but administratively independent of -- Focus on the Family Canada.

Its director is David Quist, and its conference brings together up to 200 attenders and exhibitors each year -- representing a range of government, parliamentary and advocacy groups interested in marriage and family issues.

The speaker to whom I refer was Iain Duncan Smith, a British member of parliament who was, for several years, the leader of the Conservative party.

After leaving the British Tory leadership, Duncan Smith established the Centre for Social Justice, an entity separate from the Conservative party.

Among other things, the Centre has encouraged the development of social justice and service projects utilizing the strength and resources of what one might call "civil society." That would include non-government organizations, as well as charitable and religious groups.

All that sounds mundane, of course; but Duncan Smith's passion has been to help community groups to both understand and meet social needs -- especially those requiring attention to work, income and community organization. And it was an interest in his work that caused IMFC to bring him across the ocean to speak in Ottawa.

Now we fast forward to May 12 in England, when Duncan Smith was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat government of Prime Minister David Cameron.

In the year or so running up to the May 6 election, Cameron hammered away on a major Conservative plank of "Big society, not big government."

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It represented the desire of the conservative side of the political spectrum to kick away from an emphasis on strong government intervention into the economy, and its sometime accompaniment of social engineering. That would have been the theme of the Labour government of Tony Blair and latterly Gordon Brown, during the last decade plus.

The "big society" concept, in fact, was built, in part at least, out of the research of the Centre for Social Justice. In the latter part of the election campaign, the Tories laid less emphasis on that particular plank.

But the election of the 306 Conservatives, some 20 short of a majority, was a strongly practical reason to adjust right-thinking political minds toward the centrist approach represented by "big society, not big government" thinking.

So, on Tuesday, David Cameron moved swiftly to form a full coalition, with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as his deputy prime minister. The significance of this move was that it was, other things being equal, both prudent and expedient to form the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition.

Both leaders are relatively moderate, young and energetic. While they might occasionally clash because they are both ambitious and pro-active, they are mature enough to "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."

What is significant is that both men felt secure enough to form a full coalition. That takes a fair amount of political and personal trust. And I would submit that one of the reasons for the potential for security was the work that Duncan Smith had done on the Centre for Social Justice.

It gave both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats some close-at-hand information and research that could pave the way for a touching and eventual melding of the political and social justice cultures of the two parties.

Are there any lessons to be learned for Canada, out of this British experience? My first response is a backhanded one.

I would suggest that if Britain had gone the Labour/Lib Dem route, that would have been almost parallel to what had been proposed by the "Coup-a-lition" in Canada, in November 2008.

We have been able to carry on -- with some hiccups -- with a Conservative government falling slightly short of a majority. We have not required a full coalition and that has emerged in part because of some strategic mutual goodwill among the various parties.

It has been a bit messy at times but, so far, is still working. We have not needed either a Conservative/Liberal or Conservative/NDP coalition and, in any case, the cultural adjustment for either scenario would have been only marginally feasible.

But we should keep watching the British experience. It might provide lessons to share -- if not now, maybe someday. That could be especially true if, in our own House of Commons, the new cross-party Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care takes off -- as well it might.

May 13/2010