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I'm sorry but I need to say this:

This is one of those threads where I really just feel like doing a facepalm. There is so little info to go around on what is going on in Europe politically and financially in this thread, and so many huge misconceptions that it's hard to even start commenting on anything.

Let me give a few basic pointers as to what's going on. These are simplifications but it's a really complicated mess as a whole and I'm trying to avoid making highly controversial claims.

To start with it's important to remember that the EU has always been a pet project of high-level politicians and corporate interests with limited public support. Essentially every public vote to expand the powers of the EU has needed huge piles of campaign money to be pushed through and even then most of the votes have barely made it through.

Essentially the EU can not in any shape or form be said to be representative of it's constituent countries, and there has always been widespread scepticism towards it.

So basicly, while there is money in the EU countries, the EU figureheads can't access it easily. What they can do however is lend money from the outside and present these more palatable bills to their national parliaments. Which is where this ties in with Canada.

General scepticism is however not the only reason why the EU decisionmakers are hesitant to put anything to parliamentary votes on a national level these days.

Basicly you can say the a general feeling is (with almost unanimous expert backing) that the current EU leaders have completely screwed up in their handling of the crisis. They are incompetent and indecisive, they can't get things done and should not be trusted with money. In the company I keep for example the Finnish financial minister and the prime minister have become walking jokes with zero political credibility.

There is also the broader question of whether or not the idea of simply shoveling tax payer money into countries in trouble is of any use. It's a plan that's been going on for a while with nothing to show for it really. The bills are simply getting bigger, and the crisis is getting deeper.

(This is actually also in line with what many financial experts stated from the very start; the banks in debt should simply be put down, if the countries go bankrupt then so be it and most specifically the institutions that gave out those bad loans should simply accept their losses and move on. Had this been the path taken at the start of the crisis, many experts say, the crisis would be over by now and the European economy on the rise again.)

The Euro has been one of the more popular EU projects, but even in that case many on the national level have questioned the wisdom of bringing in countries with such poor records of handling their affairs, such as Greece. However since no parliament or public votes have been needed to expand the Euro zone, it has grown despite numerous warnings from experts and much murmuring in the media. Which basicly means that a lot of people are now going "See, what do those politicians know" and not at all willing to open their wallets to pay for something they thought was a bad idea to begin with.

This essentially boils down to the fact that many politicians feel that presenting these bills to their national parliaments might be political suicide, even if they get the votes needed. So they are looking for workarounds.

As to why people are starting to move to the left with their votes;

Most of these problems tie in with decisively right wing policies. The right wing doctrine states that bailing out the financial institutions with tax payer money is the only option and nothing else can even be discussed. The centrist and leftist parties are rightfully pointing out that the current policies are not working and generally speaking the right wing policies of uncontrolled financial sectors and constant tax-cuts are the main problem here, not public spending. In many cases they can also point out to the fact that much like in the US, the idea that the rightist politicians are small government and the leftist are big spenders is a myth not grounded in facts. As a prime example, the current right wing government in Greece spent huge amounts of money on new tanks in the middle of this crisis and have done nothing do cut any of the more right-wing expenditures. (Which btw shent shivers down a lot of spines in Greece, as they had a military junta there as recently as the seventies.)

So there is a spreading feeling that the right wing governments have simply abused the crisis for political gains instead of trying to solve it.

Another thing to remember is that there are basicly no important socialist parties in Europe, despite what Fox news might say. The "socialists" in France are about as much socialists as the Democrats are left wing, which is to say not at all.

Even the Greek "coalition of the radical left" (often wrongfully labeled as a "far-left party" or "communist party" in the media) SYRIZA that is growing in power right now is mostly comprised of quite moderate left wingers, and their policies are really only radical in comparison to the general political winds of the last decade. (The coalition does have some radical minority parties in it though.)

It's also important to note that the statement "the west has simply lived beyond it's means" is a really questionable one. In most cases this is not a crisis of public spending, it's a crisis of the financial institutions. And unlike in the US, those financial crisis do not stem from widespread overspending by it's citizens in things such as housing. Many governments around Europe have budgets that are quite alright, and the only real problem they have is these growing bills that are pushed at them to prop up financial institutions of questionable value.

Of course one reasn why the left-wing parties have not made more gains despite all this is that many of them are seen as equally corrupt, incompetent and simply out of date with their policies. Which is propably true for a large part.

Also of note: the problems with Greece were well known, but the EU let them slide for a very long time because of political reasons.

If there's just one thing I'd hope you remember from this long-winded explanation it's this:

The EU does not equal Europe any more than the UN equals the worlds, and there should be no assumption that what the EU does somehow represents either general European opinions or general European interests.