this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Eh Buddy Hoser
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Take off ya hoser!
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I know he lost the election, but anybody have time to give context for the rest of it? I'm trying to keep up with y'all, but my news feed fills up pretty fast just with the domestic stuff down here these days.
In Canada, the country is split up into a few hundred ridings and each riding gets a representative in Parliament. The political party with the most representatives forms government and their leader is the Prime Minister who is allowed to stay at a specific house in Ottawa. The political party with the second most representatives forms the official opposition and their leader is the Leader of the Opposition who also gets to stay at a specific house in Ottawa.
Pierre Poilievre lost the election in his riding, meaning he lost his seat, meaning he can't be opposition leader, meaning he can't stay in the house reserved for the opposition leader. One can assume he also shat his bed.
It's recently been announced that another Conservative member that did win a seat in a landslide victory will be resigning from it. The idea here is that a new election for just that seat will be held (a by-election) and Pierre will run for it. It's expected he'll win it easily and will once again be a member of parliament, and can once again be the leader of the opposition, and can move back into his house.
I actually didn't know that. So the PM isn't directly elected, but by being one of the majority party?
The PM isn't directly elected! Technically, they are appointed by the monarch of Canada, who is currently King Charles, but the monarch is constitutionally required to follow the directions of the government of Canada.
In practice, this means the party who forms government picks the PM, who is typically also the party's leader. Fun fact, because of this, the PM also doesn't actually need a seat in parliament! That's how Mark Carney became PM after Trudeau stepped down. Carney now has a seat after running in the recent election. It creates a lot of issues if the PM doesn't have a seat in parliament as well as the optics of the PM never actually winning an election, but it's allowed!
Interesting. And yet, somehow, that's still less convoluted than the electoral college process. Thanks.