The Wikipedia article on government shutdowns indicates that the American federal or state governments shut down with surprising regularity: there was a federal government shutdown every few years from 1980 to 1996, and state shutdowns every year since 2005.
I don’t recall this ever happening in Canada at the federal or provincial levels. Did I miss something in the last thirty years? If not, why are the various US governments more susceptible to budget crises and shutdowns than the Canadian governments?
To expand on that a bit. Since the Executive is also normally the majority party in the Legislature the passage of a majority party’s budget is normally a forgone conclusion since budgets are considered confidence votes. I.e. No party in power willingly votes itself out of office.
Now for minority governments the budgets tend to pass simply through regular trading of votes. In many ways this is similar to the various US State and Federal approaches. However, in the event where no agreement can be made the Executive tables the budget, it fails the vote and the government falls. Normally that would mean a new election.
In addition, if the budget doesn’t pass and there’s an election, there are laws that allow interim payments from the treasury to fund the routine expenses of governments, during the election. So even if the budget doesn’t pass, the pension cheques still go out, government offices stay open, etc. Then, after the election, the expenses get acknowledged in the next budget. We never have government offices shutting down in the same way as happened at the federal level in the US during the dispute between Clinton and Gingrinch.