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Originally Posted by Wes Mantooth
I've always wondered exactly how that procedure works BG. So would it be considered bad form to call an election simply because a PM/party is unpopular? In other words is it viewed as a safety net or is that over simplifying everything?
I guess conversely we here in the states do have mid term elections which can help strike some balance, the Republicans could take back Congress this year which would severely limit the power Obama has, cutting 4 years of "damage" down to 2. (I actually don't mind Obama though so its okay from my perspective).
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You couldn't pay me to touch the main topic of this thread, but I can at least answer these questions.
First of all, there's a distinction to be made -- Canada has a multi-party system, with typically 4-5 different parties holding enough seats to be influential at any given time. The two big names are the Liberal party and the Conservative party, but there's also currently the NDP and Bloq Quebecois. Parties occasionally merge, split, or otherwise change, meaning the exact number of parties holding seats can change from one parliament to the next. Because of this, it's possible for a party to have enough support to gain a plurality without holding a majority of the seats in the house (currently 308 total, so 154 for a majority). This is in contrast to the US system where (as I understand it) congress can belong to one or the other of the two parties, but tends not to be divvied up further than that.
Minority governments are inherently unstable -- to my knowledge, there has never been one to successfully complete a 4 year term. The problem is that whole non-confidence thing; a non-confidence motion can be introduced at any time, and if passed will force the government party out of power (this also happens if a budget fails, though that's technically known as a supply failure instead of a non-confidence motion).
If this occurs, there are one of two ways for things to go. The governer general (who represents the queen in Canada) may ask the opposition party to form a new government, if they have enough support. Since the opposition by definition does not hold a plurality, this would require them to form a coalition with another party in order to boost the number of seats they hold. There was recently talk of this happening if the current minority had been defeated, but due to other political maneuvering that we won't get into it didn't. If it had, it would've been the second time in Canada's history. In the vast majority of cases, the entire government is dissolved and reformed through a general election.
Dissolving the government is a big deal. Elections take a lot of time and resources and nothing can be accomplished until they're done. Because of this, non-confidence votes are generally considered to be something of a political checkmate. If it works, the opposition might be able to gain some seats or even take over the government, but if it backfires the government party might gain more power, even shifting into a majority. It's the end game to the political maneuvering.
The result of all of this is that it works out that the Canadian system has a different set of checks and balances. It's notable also that in practical terms we don't have a separate executive branch. Technically the queen is the head of state here (and is represented by the GG for everyday affairs) but in practice the prime minster holds the power. This means that a majority government is a powerful mandate. However, since we don't have term limits either, it's not exactly a carte blanche either -- if a party pisses off the electorate too much, they may wind up out of power for a very long time. Jean Chretien, for example, was prime minister over a majority government for 10 years straight, and retired before being voted out (although there's more to that story that I won't get into here). This period followed Brian Mulroney, who is perhaps one of the least popular PM's in Canada's history and was a conservative. After Chretien retired the Conservatives managed to regain power, but Stephen Harper hasn't been able to secure a majority to date, meaning things have been unstable for the last decade or so.
I'm not really sure what aspect of this causes Canadian politics to be so much more sober than the American equivalent, though I've made the same observation. I suspect it's just a cultural thing, really, and that pointing to one specific aspect of the system isn't going to be accurate.
But that's how it works, anyway.