Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderball
Well, the cheap answer is that political culture in Canada is a little different than in Europe. In Europe, it is common knowledge that parties have to coalesce, and they have certain "buddies" that they ally with. It is also established in precedence that "grand coalitions" between the two largest parties are encouraged. See: Germany: Merkel CDU/CSU-SDP Coalition. It is also incumbent on the party that wins to form a coalition to help them govern as a majority. Not the also-rans to overthrow the plurality. That typically leads to instability and a swift return to the polls.
Since we're used to Majority Governments, and we're used to seeing the US majority system and assume whoever gets the most votes is the government (until they fail and we get to vote for them again), we don't expect our parties to coalesce, as they were not voted in to do so.
For example, if the Liberals had made it clear that an NDP coalition was a real possibility, the odds are good the Blue Liberals would be scared into voting CPC.
There's a distinction between what is legal to do, and what is acceptable to do.
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Personally, I wasn't surprised. I even predicted it 3 months ago:
http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...on#post1421801
Toot! Toot!
Interesting to read some of the replies to that post when it didn't seem like a big possibility.
I think people better get used to the idea because like the Economist article posted earlier alludes to, coalitions are likely going to become necessary in Canada which is already a 4 party system (almost 5).
Either that, or our system needs a massive change.