Can someone in Canada please explain the current political crisis to me?

[Jeannie]

The articles I've read don't do a great job explaining things.

[CDB]

I'll try.

We don't vote for our Prime Minister, we vote for a party representative. The leader of the party with the most representatives voted in becomes Prime Minister. In this case, there were more Conservative MP's recently voted in than any other party, so Stephen Harper is our PM. He's leading what is called a minority government right now which means that, even though there are more Conservative MP's in Parliament, there are not enough to generate a majority vote to pass bills and whatnot. To be able to do that, the Conservatives need to get MP's from another party to vote with them.

Some things can be tabled as a confidence vote. If the government loses this vote, the government has 'lost confidence' and an election (typically) is called. This often doesn't happen because the other parties know that they'll lose an election anyway, so one party or another generally will vote with the Conservatives so they won't lose a confidence vote.

What has just happened is that the NDP and Liberals have said that they're going to form a coalition with the support of the Bloc Quebecois party to topple the Conservative government on the next confidence vote. That was supposed to happen last week. Instead, our PM asked for Parliament to be prorogued (delayed) until January, and our Governer General agreed. So right now, Parliament is suspended with no votes going on.

The outrage is that the Bloc Quebecois party is not really a national party (ie: they don't run any representatives anywhere else except Quebec). Their main goal is that they want Quebec separated from Canada. For the Liberals and NDP to get in bed with each other is not necessarily so bad (they're both left as it is), but to give consession to the Bloc party who doesn't have Canada's national interests in mind is a bitter pill to swallow.

The fear is that the Bloc will get special things (ie: MONEY) granted to Quebec to be kept happy to keep them supporting the NDP/Liberal coalition. Without the Bloc, the NDP/Liberal's still don't have enough MP's to defeat the Conservatives in a confidence vote - they need the Bloc to vote with them. The other thing is that there is a feeling that Canada soundly rejected the leader of the Liberals (Stephan Dion) to be our next leader, the Liberals actually lost a lot of seats (MP's) in the last vote. Stephan Dion would become Prime Minister if the coalition were to be successful. A lot of Canadians are outraged at that - we rejected him as our PM. It's been a political power play mess on all sides, and many people are pretty pissed right now. No one feels as though these politians currently have Canada's best interests in mind - they simply want to be the leader.

It's all been rather discouraging. Not sure if I've explained things properly or not, but hope it helps! The good news is that Canadians have become much more interested in politics as of late!

[Jeannie]

Thank you. That's fascinating. I don't know why the American press isn't covering this more. If Iam understanding this right - it could result in the current PM being ousted. That's big news right?

Okay, please explain who the Governor General is and why he has the power to shut down Parliament? Even temporarily? I couldn't imagine something like that happening in the U.S.

[northy]

our current governor general is a *she*!

the position is largely ceremonial... the GG (as she is affectionately known) represents the queen in canada...

CDB did an excellent job of explaining things so far that i am sure i will botch it... basically because our system of gov't emulates the one in the UK, we need the GG to open and close parliament... she doesn't have any real power to do this on her own... would only ever do so at the request of the PM... of course, the way things are going right now, who knows what will end up happening!

and yes, this is HUGE news here... but it's embarassing as he!!... somewhere someone described us as a banana republic... yeesh! but probably deserved... hopefully cooler heads will prevail when parliament resumes in january...

m

[CDB]

Yes, that's right. Our Governer General (a her!) is really just a figurehead - our liason to the Queen. The Prime Minister asked that she prorogue Parliament. She could have refused, but didn't. She can also refuse to call an election if the ruling Party is defeated in a confidence motion, but generally would not do so. It's been done in the past though. The coalition, could in fact, oust our Prime Minister if it comes to that. It really is huge news here.

Our GG is appointed by the Prime Minister and was in fact appointed by the last one - a Liberal Prime Minister. Our current Prime Minister could replace her if he chose to do so, but I think that would just infuriate people more. She was also caught in a hard place because if she didn't prorogue Parliament and forced the confidence vote, people could say she chose to do so because of her Liberal leanings. It's been nasty and gross.

If you read The National Post (it's right leaning, though), you could get a clearer picture. The Globe and Mail, also, but it's left leaning. FWIW, I have a hard time understanding it all!