Actually, even a good reason isn’t enough. Only in Canada could a seminal constitutional matter be known as King/Byng. In short, an election was fought over the Crown’s ability to judge whether an election was justified. The bottom line was that if the PM wants an election, he gets it.
I’m not certain, but I believe the Governor General is officially named by the Queen (in practice chosen by the Prime Minister), and can be fired by the Queen as well. I believe there have been Governors General who were recalled before the end of their mandate, back when the position was more powerful.
She’d probably be declared unable to rule anymore and a regency would be declared with Charles as regent. Else, the monarchy would be abolished, whether the monarch agrees or not.
Can we 'Merkins stop getting so many complaints about all the US election threads here now?
No. I’ve seen two Canadian election threads on the board currently: this one and another in MPSIMS. I don’t know how many active threads on the US presidential elections there are currently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than 30.
Two whole threads! You can barely find the thread where people are exposing themselves for all of them.
Based on what - the two threads we have now on Canadian politics (one of which will probably be supplanted by this one) and the six weeks of potential threads on our election versus the last 18 months of multiple American political threads plus damned near every discussion getting turned into an American political discussion? Sorry, we are indeed going to talk Canadian politics for the next little while, and if you don’t like it, too bad. 
You can’t be serious. Anyway, the election will be all finished three weeks before the one down here, so there won’t be any competition then.
Well, except for the rational discussions about why the Bloc and the NDP won’t back a Liberal minority government.
I’d be pretty shocked if the Liberals picked up any seats, let alone enough to be asked to form a minority government. If they did, however, the NDP would probably support them.
I’m going to call a very slim Conservative majority. What I don’t know is how Harper is going to replace his one competent cabinet minister, who isn’t running cuz he’s afraid to face his constituents.
Wouldn’t abolishing the monarchy require an Act of Parliament to which the monarch could (wait for it) refuse Assent ?
I’m assuming that you’re referring to David “bait-and-switch” Emerson?
Yes, but if the people really want it, there’s nothing the monarch can do.
You’re probably right. But see, this is my main issue with parliamentary government. Canada has a minority government that none of the other three represented parties support. By some marvelous concatenation of ballessness and bullheadedness, none of these three parties want to support any of the others, either. This is not government, it’s institutionalized bickering.
I actually hope the Liberals and NDP lose to such an extent that they both have competent leaders next election.
You guys call it gridlock.
Good point.
This may be a problem in the UK. It isn’t in Canada, where the Queen has no actual executive power.
The Bloc and the NDP have been voting against the government on confidence issues. It’s just the Liberals who’ve been afraid to bring down the Tories, for reasons that are hardly mysterious.
The Bloc won’t support any other party. They want the federal government to be dysfunctional. Moreover, formal support from the Bloc would be the kiss of death to the other parties in TROC. The NDP don’t have enough seats to take either the Tories or Liberals into majority territory on their own, so they don’t have any real ability to form a coalition.
Anyways, it’s all Mulroney’s fault.
Except when they vote to pass the first two Harper budgets with nothing for Quebec, some months after having voted against the Liberal/NDP budget that invested $1 billion in transit, housing, and post-secondary education in Quebec.
As I recall from my time in Ottawa - and I could be remembering wrong - there was some debate amongst the three parties as to how they should vote in order to ensure that the government did not fall. Once the NDP and Bloc knew that the Liberals would not vote against the government, they were free to play to the public.
(This is as I remember from reading the Ottawa Citizen.
That’s funny - I always blame Chretien (or Trudeau if I’m feeling old school). 
Well, despite being tongue in cheek, I wasn’t entirely joking. It was because of Mulroney that the PC’s fragmented and we got the Bloc and Reform, and this seemingly unending string of broken, dysfunctional parliaments.