Minority government supporters can hardly contain themselves when it comes to recent events in British Columbia. The negotiation of an accord between the NDP and Green Parties will soon result in the replacement of the Clark Liberals with a new NDP minority government.Those that love extolling the virtues of minority governments are predicting that B.C. is about to enter a golden age. Unicorns will frolic in pipeline-free fields while happy porpoises will swim in its bitumen-less waters.I hate to burst their bubble but everyone should probably forget about unicorns and happy porpoises.As government house leader during the 2011 Liberal minority at Queen's Park, I do not share any optimism when it comes to the new government's prospects. What the Ontario experience teaches us is that the B.C. minority will likely be as dysfunctional as most other recent minority governments in Canada with the opposition focused on one goal – destabilizing the government.It's hard to say exactly when the dysfunction will start. Many political commentators, for example, are concerned about who is going to be the Legislature's new speaker.  The resignation of the Liberal Speaker last week raises the distinct possibility that the NDP might have to take on the role. Will this create an unworkable tie situation in the Legislature?Although these questions keep procedural wonks up at night, I hate to burst their bubble. Nobody cares. This is particularly true of B.C. voters, the vast majority of whom don't want another election, according to recent public opinion polls.With no popular support for an election, the most likely scenario is what happened in Ontario. All parties will begrudgingly agree to a situation where, procedurally at least, a minority government can function.Then, let the games begin.Although the NDP and Greens agreed to a number of key initiatives, very little else will probably get done. Our experience in Ontario was that even if opposition parties supported a particular policy, they rarely helped us pass it. If it was controversial they didn't want to wear it, and if it was popular, they didn't want the government to get credit.And destabilizing a government doesn't have to be overt. We found that the opposition quickly became adept at using every trick in the book to prolong debate and discussion so that nothing got done.The greatest games took place in legislative committees where the government was also outnumbered. Even most parliamentarians don't realize that committees hold more power than the courts. They can demand any document, no matter how sensitive or confidential, including non-governmental records. They can also compel any witness to testify and demand that they betray the most sensitive and privileged information.It took a little while for the opposition to realize this power but once they got the hang of it, Ontario witnessed some of the greatest and most irresponsible fishing expeditions in its history. Every government misstep or controversy resulted in demands from opposition dominated committees for every conceivable document – from sensitive briefing notes to casual email conversations to personal diaries. Witnesses were summoned and browbeaten without the type of protection they would receive in a courtroom, including a demand by one opposition member that a physician violate doctor-patient confidentiality.For months, committee requests tied the bureaucracy in knots as it scrambled to produce literally tens of thousands of documents that were in turn used by the opposition to knock the government back on its heels day after day. In fact, many of the so-called "scandals" that plagued the Ontario minority had less to do with government policies or actions and more to do with the government's unwillingness to surrender extremely sensitive documents.Will the same happen in British Columbia?Committees in B.C. operate differently. Rather than amending legislation, they tend to study matters referred to them by the legislature. And although committee membership is supposed to reflect each party's share of seats in the legislature, it is not a written rule.Theoretically, a B.C. minority government might try to demand a government majority on committees or prevent committees from doing too much damage by either severely limiting their mandates or giving them very little work.Such a strategy won't work. The opposition will accuse the government of avoiding transparency and accountability – something the Greens can't dispute. And the pressure on the Greens to help destabilize a NDP government will only grow as the New Democrats realize the difficulty of implementing promises, experience the inevitable rookie mistakes and deal with a bureaucracy unsure of its life expectancy.Recent minority governments in Canada are not the political nirvana that many believe and parties in B.C. would be wise to become familiar with the Ontario experience. Even without the threat of defeating a government, the opposition's power to destabilize a minority government is so overwhelming that chaos is soon to follow.John Milloy is a former MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister currently serving as the director of the Centre for Public Ethics and assistant professor of public ethics at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, and the inaugural practitioner in residence in Wilfrid Laurier University's Political Science department. He is also a lecturer in the University of Waterloo's Master of Public Service Program.  John can be reached at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @John_Milloy. A version of this column was originally published in the online publication QP Briefing.