Canada may have a federal election

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Minority government has saved Canada from the free market experimentation that other countries are carrying out as a result of the failure of previous free market experimentation. A majority government would be a catastrophic result.

I always think of Canada as the America of an alternate universe. Similar to this universe, but also different.

ruveyn

Canada is the place where the American Revolution was defeated by the Redcoats.

Canada played by the rules and got the best deal in the end

Correct. No 14th state for the original Union. The Yankees got trounced at York and Ft. Niagra.

ruveyn

I view Canada as slightly less than half-way between America and Western Europe ("slightly closer to America") when it comes to religiosity and income equality. It's quite different from America in the "tone" of politics and similar to the Nordic countries in that regard (though quite different from the mass-action, harsh tone of French politics). All, in all, I think Canada's trailing the US in terms of the corporatization of politics (as is Europe, to a lesser extent).

The Quebecois were not impressed with the American soldiers who 'graced' them with their presence during the Revolution. It was only after the Revolution that English people began migrating to the upper St Lawrence/Lake Ontario region that would become Upper Canada (eventually Canada West, then Ontario...). The Quebecois had little reason to want to be the 14th state, if anything they probably would have rejoined France or tried forming their own republic (doubtful, as society was very feudal in Quebec at the time, very unlike the Thirteen Colonies) had they joined the fight against the British. Alas, the British gave the Quebecois most of what they wanted in 1774, and this actually was one of the things that pissed off the 13 colonies and ensured Quebec's loyalty

Another being the land in the Ohio River Valley that the Indigenous people were allowed to keep thanks to the Pontiac War.

So I take it the Conservatives ran things with a minority government? As soon as the opposition parties are able to agree to disagree, they're able to lose confidence in the government and force an election at more or less random intervals? One advantage of the U.S. system over the Westminster system is that U.S. elections are on a predictable schedule. Even if the House of Representatives somehow lost confidence in its Speaker, we still wouldn't have elections; the majority would simply nominate a new Speaker (depending on House rules). Individual members of Congress may also vote against their party, and even if a sizable minority of the party joins the opposition in voting against their leadership on an issue, this doesn't result in no confidence (the Speaker would most likely not bring the bill to the floor for a vote if it were so unpopular since they almost always know how their caucus will vote in advance).

It sounds like your Conservatives roughly equate to our Republicans; your Liberals are around the political center; and your New Democrats sound much like our liberal/progressive Democrats.

Honestly our Conservative Party is closer to your Democrat Party then to the Republicans. The economic and social policies that the Republican party espouses are not popular with most Canadian Conservatives.
I'm sure that many of the GOP & Tea Party would love to have the Westminster option of no-confidence vote, in regards to President Obama, and in the past Democrats in regards to Bush

The Conservatives have governed a lot less conservatively than the GOP, but that's mainly because they're in a minority and it'd be political suicide to push a far-right agenda immediately. Stephen Harper (Con Party Leader), as an Alliance MP (the modern Conservative Party of Canada is the result of a merger between the rightwing populist Alliance Party and the more moderate "Progressive Conservative Party of Canada" - itself a result of a merger between the Progressive Party and an older Conservative Party in the early 20th century), made a lot of offensive statements, called Canada a "Northern European Welfare State, in the worst sense of the term", supported the Iraq War (then again, so did the present Liberal Party leader), and opposed billingualism.

You're right, the Conservatives base occupies a place analogous to the Republicans, the Liberal Party is similar to the establishment of the Democratic Party, and the NDP is closer to the Progressive Democrats of America.

Weren't the Canadian Liberals historically quite left-orientated compared to other world liberal parties?. By that i mean centre-left i suppose. I'm guessing they've moved rightwards after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the NDP have filled their place as a more social democratic alternative? What about Left of NDP currents? Do they have an representation in parliament? What electoral system are you using over there?

Well, in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II there was quite a bit of polarization in Europe between the social democratic and conservative parties. A lot of classical liberal parties (which, really, is a very heterogenous bunch - J.S. Mill was a classical liberal yet believed worker cooperatives were a superior form of economic arrangement that would replace more conventionally capitalistic enterprises) shifted to the centre in Europe, becoming "reform liberals" - not too egalitarian yet not to anti-egalitarian. They were squeezed out of significance as Europe became polarized between social democrats and conservatives. In Canada, surprisingly, this "reform liberal" strategy ensured the Liberal Party the status as Canada's "natural governing party" for many years.

All parties in Canada have shifted right since the 1980s, following a more general Anglo-American trend (remember Maggie and Reagan?). The predessor of the NDP, the CCF, was actually a democratic socialist party. The post-war Liberal Party advocated a very expansive form of social welfare liberalism. Later, the CCF reorganized itself as the NDP and removed the plank about abolishing capitalism (which was in the Regina Manifesto of the CCF) and replaced it with a plank about reforming capitalism (The Winnipeg Manifesto, which was written while the CCF was still the CCF, stated that the party's goal was to reform rather than replace capitalism, and so shifted the CCF from being a socialist party to a leftwing social democratic party). The Liberals in the 1970s were lefty enough to start a government-owned ("Crown") corporation which was in the oil business (Petro Canada), but was later sold off by governments of Progressive Conservatives and blue (rightwing) Liberals.

The NDP do have a decent number of seat in the House of Commons, although they have never formed a federal government (they have, at various times formed provincial governments and currently are in power in Nova Scotia--maybe elsewhere too, I don't know). As Mater_Pedant said, they used to be a socialist party, but aren't any more. They are roughly equivalent to the British Labour Party. It makes me sad that so few countries actually have socialist parties now--the world seems to be facing a decline in diversity of economic systems. Pretty much everyone now is just Capitalist. Those that have something different are oppressive states where you would not want to live. Socialism seems to have failed to take any real hold. Too bad, it would be more interesting if there was a bit more variety to the world's economies.

We use essentially the same electoral system as you guys do. In practice (some of the technicalities behind the various figure-heads like the Senate and Governor General differ) the main way our governments differ is in that we have the provincial governments taking care of some stuff and fighting with each other and the federal government. Also, MPs in Canada are rarely aloud to vote differently then their party. If they do the are back-benched or even expelled from the caucus.

The NDP have run British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and from 1990 to 1995, Ontario. The war that the media declared on that government really was a sight to behold.