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Originally Posted by ADL Colin
A few questions/comments
Canadians don't actually elect a prime minister. Correct? You elect a party?
Stuart, you mentioned that you can pick from a bunch of parties but isn't it true that nearly every Canadian federal election ends with the liberals or progressive conservatives winning? The US has a lot more than just republicans and democrats. There are independents, libertarians, green party, Constitution party and so on but yeah, in the end just a few dominate. Isn't it the same way in Canada?
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Yeah, those two always win... which is pretty stupid, but it's very rarely as close to 50/50 as it tends to be in the US. Our smaller parties tend to have decent showings in the elections which brings closer to a healthier mix (in my opinion).
For example, from 1993:
"Lucien Bouchard's separatist Bloc Québécois become the official opposition, and the right-wing Reform Party, led by Preston Manning, becomes the third party. Meanwhile Audrey McLaughlin's New Democrats and Campbell's Progressive Conservatives both have their worst electoral results ever, with 9 and 2 seats, respectively."
The liberals won that one, but 2 other parties were virtually power houses as they could out number the liberals should they ever choose to.
And the conservatives? They didn't have much of a voice.
So while it's true that we primarily stick to 2 parties as leaders, we divvy up their powers and spread out the "thinking" to a lot more parties once they have to decide on anything.