A deal has been reached! A summer election has been averted! Instead, Canadians will almost certainly be given the joy of a wildly popular November/December election!

Sources say Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have finalized the details of an agreement that will preserve the Conservatives’ minority government – for now.

Under the deal, the parties will each pick two members of a blue-ribbon panel to recommend changes to employment insurance, including coverage for self-employed workers and lower eligibility thresholds.

There will also be more opposition days for the Liberals, which will give them more chances to force a federal election in the fall.

Score this one as a major win for Ignatieff. Not only did he avert an election he likely would have won, but Harper agreed to take Ignatieff’s only real issue (EI) off the table for the foreseeable future by appointing a blue ribbon panel to examine it. Because, after all, this issue certainly requires the sort of immediate action and attention that only appointing a commission to study it further can deliver!

OK, OK. On a serious note, while Iggy comes out of this mess looking a bit clumsy, getting the opposition days in the falls presumably gives the Liberals a fall election if they want it, and personally I think they’d fare better then than now.

So let’s just all enjoy our summer and be glad our parliamentarians showed a relative degree of maturity for once.