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Just to clarify a couple of points:

When he says that the leader is elected by the party, I just want to make sure you understand that it is the party membership and not the members of the House of Commons that does the choosing. Party membership is open to anyone for usually a small fee.

I also wanted to highlight the confidence concept since it is one of the major features that distinguishes the checks-and-balances system in the US from parliamentary tradition. In Canada, the Governor General [GG] (who is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister) is the head of state, but they govern through the Cabinet with the Prime Minister [PM] heading the whole thing as the head of government. The PM chooses the Ministers in the Cabinet who are offically appointed by the GG. These Cabinet ministers, like the Prime Minister, can actually be anyone in theory, but tradition dictates that they should be sitting MPs each elected by their own constitutency.

The Cabinet and the Prime Minister in a parliamentary government have absolute control over the legislative agenda - the system is basically based on concentration of powers as opposed to the checks-and-balances system of the US. While this may initially seem negative, it has one major feature lacking in American politics: there is absolute accountability in the Cabinet and PM, whereas in the States the diffusion of powers makes it easy for finger pointing to other branches of gov't if something goes wrong.

This accountability in the Parliamentary system means that all gov't bills must be introduced by either the Minister in charge or someone speaking on his/her behalf, and the Minister has to be present in Parliament to defend the bills and answer daily questions about his/her policies from the opposition. You can imagine the change in dynamic of government if the President of the United States and his cabinet had to respond to live daily questions from the legislative bodies over their policies.

The last major difference is that no MP in Canada is elected to a fixed term, though there is a maximum of five years. This brings us to the concept of confidence. The majority party are the only ones that can pass legislation to either raise or spend money, but in order to have this privilege, they must prove that they have the support of the people's representatives.

Thus, so long as the Cabinet and Prime Minster can keep the confidence of the house, or ensuring that 50% + 1 of the sitting MPs vote in favour of the legislation introduced by the gov't, they can continue to govern. At the point that they attempt to pass legislation that has less than 50% support, a 'non-confedence motion' can be attached to the bill, which if it passes, forces the GG to either dissolve the gov't and call elections, or in the case of a minority situation where no party has 50% of the seats, possibly ask the Leader of the Official Opposition to form his/her own cabinet with him/her as the Prime Minister. Usually the latter occurs if a minority government has fallen immediately after an election, but ultimately it is up to the judgement of the GG.

One last point -- where in the American there is this balance between being 'partisan' and co-operating with the other party, in the parliamentary system, as the title "Leader of the Official Opposition" suggests, the role of those not in government is to oppose government action - to put continually put forward an alternative conception of how the country should be run.

Except in the case of a minority gov't situation where the gov't is looking for opposition parties to pass their bills, there are very few issues that arise in which all or even some parties will agree. This, combined with the duty of the PM and Cabinet (or a representative for them) to be present in the House every day for questioning of their policies allows for continual open debate about government policy.

This role of the opposition is important, because even in situations of crisis, such as after 9/11, it ensures that parliament will still debate the merits of a government response to a greater degree than I believe happened in the US, where most representatives, not wanting to act against a President with huge approval ratings, were basically forced politically to adopt most poast-9/11 measures without significant debate. In Canada this is less likely to occur because of the enshrined role of the Opposition to contest government legislation.

Anyway, I'm sure that's more than anyone ever wanted to know about Parliamentary confidence, but being a Political Science person, it's kind of down my ally.

- Vincent

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