explain canada's government, flamingoyster!

[sashwap]

[pushuppop]

I'm not flaming o, but I might be able to help. Canada just had an election. They use a parliamentary system of government, so people vote for their local member of parliament in their riding and whichever party has the most MPs elected is in power. The leader of that party becomes prime minister. The conservative party "won" the election, but did not have more than 50% of the MPs in parliament. This is called a minority government. The other three parties (Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois) have the rest of the seats in parliament. These other three "opposition" parties want to join together to form a "coalition government" because their combined parliament seats would make up a majority. A lot of Canadians feel that this is undemocratic, but it's actually exactly how the parliamentary system should work.

[mike]

Dec 4, 2008 22:32:08 GMT -5 pushuppop said:

The conservative party "won" the election

So this really happened?

[pushuppop]

That's kind of what the conservatives are doing now.

I meant "won" as they had the most, but not a majority of seats in parliament.

[sashwap]

ah, thanks. it seemed like weirder things were afoot. i am certain i learned nothing about canada's government in school.

also, apparently what is conservative in canada is what we in the US would call democrat?

[pushuppop]

On the political spectrum, yes. There's nothing as far right as republican in Canada.

[polishq]

And apparently you can have an election whenever you want?

[pushuppop]

There's no regular interval, like here in the US. The Governor General can call an election (as advised by the Prime Minister) at anytime within five years of the last election, but no later. Or an election occurs when there is a vote of non-confidence, which is when the majority of MPs vote that they are not confident in the current government.

[flamingoyster]

thanks for stealing my moment of glory

[flamingoyster]

pushuppop did a much better job than i coud've, in seriousness.

generally i think people agree that canada's conservative government is equal to america's democratic government, but lately i've been thinking about how accurate that is.... maybe it depends on who is in power at the time... but if you took obama vs. stephen harper, i'm pretty sure harper would come out as the more right-winged one. just with basic platform stuff, he's pretty clear about believing in traditional family values and everything...and he is pretty into cutting social funding. plus, anyone with eyes that blue has to be evil..................

a coalition government has never happened before so it's pretty interesting.

[sashwap]

so how is this thing is panning out?

[thommmmm]

top three things i don't understand:
- foreign government
- economics
- cell phone plans