Some of Canada’s leading constitutional thinkers are growing increasingly alarmed at the rhetoric surrounding coalition government in the current election campaign.

“Shocking ignorance” and “miseducation” were some of the words thrown around on Wednesday night when eminent constitutional experts got together at the University of Toronto to discuss “uncertain election outcomes.”

Peter Russell, one of Canada’s leading authors and former professors on the constitution, says the current election rhetoric is making Canadians believe that their choice on May 2 is between a Parliament that doesn’t work or a Parliament that doesn’t matter.

“That’s a pretty ugly choice,” Russell said. “That’s no choice at all: a dysfunctional Parliament or an irrelevant Parliament.”

Russell says Canadians have to face the fact that no political party in Canada is overwhelmingly popular and that Parliament, by necessity, is going to have to focus on co-operation, not conflict.

He said that four elections in seven years is proof that Canada has “election-itis” and that politicians have stopped trying to make Parliament work.

Brian Topp, a former NDP campaign chief and author of a book on the 2008 coalition controversy in Canada, said it’s crucial that Canadians understand, with a cool head, that their government rests on the confidence of the House of Commons.

Topp and Russell, along with a couple of dozen other leading thinkers on these issues, have been at work on a how-to manual for the country to follow if the next election produces an unclear result.

Britain and New Zealand have such manuals, and they take the pressure — and some of the hysteria — off the prospect of coalitions, the experts say.

“What would be nice to put beyond debate is the basic rules of the game,” Topp said.

Former Liberal cabinet minister Bill Graham also lent his weight to the discussion and decried the lack of civic literacy, saying also that the media — with its appetite for black-and-white, nasty battles — was feeding the “lack of civics literacy.”

The discussion, at the Munk Centre, landed in the middle of renewed controversy over coalition government in the heat of Canada’s federal election campaign.

Conservative leader Stephen Harper has been accusing the opposition parties of harbouring a secret plan to seize power if he wins less than 50 per cent of the seats in Parliament in the current election.

Conservatives were saying they received renewed evidence of that plan this week when Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff discussed post-election scenarios on CBC TV and said it was possible he could be called upon to form a government if Harper didn’t have the confidence of the House.

Russell said that Ignatieff’s remarks were “fine,” and in keeping with Canada’s constitutional laws and conventions.

But he said that Ignatieff wouldn’t automatically be called upon to form a government if Harper can’t obtain the confidence of the Commons after May 2. Based on past precedent and convention, Ignatieff would have to substantially prove to the Governor-General that he could command a stable government, with majority backing of the Commons.

Russell told the crowd at the Munk Centre that this election debate has also convinced Canadians that a coalition would be the only option in this circumstance. Ignatieff would have “several” options, he said, and they need not include putting members of other parties in his cabinet (a standard feature of coalitions.)