Heh, you people got it all wrong. The explanation provided at the start of the thread about how our government works is wrong.
See, our country is divided up into areas called Ridings. In each riding, each political party runs a candidate. Then, on Election Day, voters choose which candidate, in their riding, they want to elect. After the ballots are counted (we do it by hand and it doesn't take us weeks and a Supreme Court decision), the winner will represent the riding in the House of Commons (I think this is the equivalent of the Senate?).
Now, the Prime Minister is the
unelected leader of the party that holds the greatest number of seats. Now here's where it gets tricky: there are 308 seats. This means that an election may have two possible outcomes:
1. MINORITY: this is what happened last night. In a minority government, the party with the most seats does not have a majority. Therefore, if it wishes to make any decisions, it must find an ally with a different political party. Minority governments are slow, and tedious, but the interests of Canadians are best served because there is forced bargaining.
Navy Pride, because we have a MINORITY government this time, there will be no overturning of same sex marriage. This is because the Conservatives are the only Right Wing party. The NDP (socialists), the Liberals (liberals in the real sense of the word, not the American liberals), and the Bloc (seperatists, long story) are all left-of-center. Therefore, Stephen Harper and the Cons. can whine and thrash and scream about gay marriage all they want, but it isn't going anywhere.
2. MAJORITY: a majority is where, simply put, the winning party has more seats than all the opposition combined. This means that government is given free reign of the country. Stephen Harper failed to get a majority, so he's stuck.
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Moving on, though. This government is not here to stay. Odds are that within 6-8 months, maybe even sooner, they'll try to force through some inane neocon bill like anti-abortion or something, and the Opposition will turn it down. Then, the government will fall, and we go into another election.
If anyone has any questions about Canadian gov't, feel free to post them here or PM me.
