OTTAWA — At a less polarized time in the life of this Parliament, chances are that at least one or maybe both of the main opposition parties would have bought in to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s proposal for a time-limited combat role for Canada in the international coalition against Islamic State terrorists in the Middle East.

Neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats would have rejected the proposal out of hand, even before the House if Commons gets down to a full-fledged debate of the issue on Monday.

In the lead-up to the announcement both would also almost certainly have kept their options more open.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair could have done that by steering clear of preemptively painting the issue as just an extension of the 2003 Iraq war.

That perspective — as Mulcair knows — is not shared by France, a leading opponent of George W. Bush’s so-called 2003 coalition of the willing, or by the vast majority of Western Europe’s progressive parties.

Justin Trudeau would have avoided resorting to locker-room humor to preemptively mock the Conservatives’ decision to sign up for a combat role. In so doing he managed only to deprive much-needed gravitas from a stance that will moving forward and, for better or for worse, define his leadership.

A prime minister seriously committed to seeking a parliamentary consensus on sending Canada to war would have reached out to his opposition vis-à-vis early in the process rather than start off by insulting their intelligence with parliamentary behavior unsuited to a responsible government.

By playing hide and seek with the opposition parties over his government’s intentions, Harper fostered suspicions that he was using the issue for political advantage.

It also would have helped if the prime minister doing the asking had not so forcefully argued for Canada’s participation in a misguided U.S.-led war in the same region a decade ago . . . and recycled the same arguments to advance his latest case for a Canadian combat role. In so doing, Harper might have well have programmed his belated reaching out to the opposition parties for failure.

But this is the time in the political cycle — only a year out from a competitive federal election — when the quest for an edge on the competition routinely takes precedence over the better instincts of most politicians.

And so it has been that over the past few weeks Canadians have been given a taste of the kind of distorted policy conversation they can expect in the House of Commons for the next pre-election year.

The first casualty of the war of words that has preceded Canada’s entry into a war has not been truth but the possibility of an actual non-partisan agreement on the way forward on the Islamic State front.

For the noise of the past few weeks obscures the fact that no federal leader actually questions the need for action against Islamic State.

None is suggesting Canada watch passively from the sidelines or even ruling out taking on a combat role for all times.

Even as it rejects the government’s chosen combat role, the NDP, for instance, is actually arguing that Canada should not “rush” into a war, a phrase that leaves the door open for Mulcair to reconsider his position at some future point.

In theory there could be an opportunity for that reconsideration in six months, when the timeline laid out by the government for this phase of Canada’s participation in the airstrikes against Islamic State comes to an end.

But the lines that were drawn in the parliamentary sand on Friday are deep and, in the current climate, they are more likely to be cemented than to be erased over the life of this Parliament.

Former prime minister Kim Campbell famously quipped that election campaigns did not lend themselves to serious policy discussions.

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But inasmuch as Monday’s House of Commons vote will reflect only the will of the party that happens to be in power, the issue of Canada’s role in the international offensive on Islamic State will be on the ballot next year.

It is not to set one’s sights sky-high to believe that voters could do a better job of rising to the occasion than their leaders have.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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