The Liberal-NDP accord could give this Parliament the time it needs to work

Six months ago, Justin Trudeau was roundly pilloried for triggering an "unnecessary" election less than two years after the previous vote.

On Tuesday, the prime minister announced that his minority government had come to an agreement with the NDP caucus that should ensure this Parliament serves for a full four years.

For this, Trudeau is being roundly pilloried — at least by the Conservatives.

The confidence-and-supply agreement certainly represents a break with how federal minority governments have approached Parliament in the recent past. The novelty of this arrangement raises all sorts of interesting political and parliamentary questions. The contents of the deal and the stability it promises could also have important consequences for federal public policy.

But it's also an implicit reply to the message Canadians seemed to send politicians in the last election: more governing and legislating, please, and less electioneering. This deal could be one way to get to that place.

A governing party that lacks a majority of the seats in the House of Commons essentially has three options. It can attempt to form a coalition government with one or more of the other parties. In that case, the parties would share the responsibility of government, with ministers from each party sitting in cabinet.

Conversely, it can attempt to negotiate with the other parties on a case-by-case basis to pass individual pieces of legislation.

Somewhere in between those two options is what the Liberals and NDP have chosen to pursue. In a confidence-and-supply arrangement, one party agrees to vote to keep the other party in power for a certain amount of time. In return, the party in power agrees to pursue certain priorities and initiatives — typically with some concessions to the smaller party's desires.

In past minority federal governments, governing parties have tended to opt for the case-by-case approach — the way Stephen Harper's Conservatives governed from 2006 to 2011, for instance. But confidence-and-supply agreements have emerged in British Columbia, Ontario and the Yukon, as well as in the United Kingdom.

In all of these cases, the basic rules of Canadian democracy have remained the same. Voters elect 338 MPs. For a government to remain in power and pass legislation, more than half of those MPs need to agree. One way or another, a prime minister has to figure out how to command and sustain a majority.

But Conservatives have been quick to suggest that something undemocratic is happening.

WATCH: Interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen attacks Liberal-NDP accord

Interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen said the prime minister had "hoodwinked" and "deceived" voters and argued that 82 per cent of voters in last fall's election did not vote for a "Liberal-NDP government."

That figure seems to be based on the fact that just 18 per cent of voters cast a ballot for the NDP. But ballots in Canada don't offer voters a choice of government configurations.