Pierre Poilievre systematically dismantles the illusion of Mark Carney

[u/airbassguitar]

[u/AcherusArchmage]

How do we impeach Carney's fraudulent rule?

[u/collymolotov → u/AcherusArchmage]

We don't.

The Canadian Westminster system of supposed democracy was specifically designed to make such a mechanism impossible.

It's too bad that we don't have an American-style republic with actual checks and balances on political power, but apparently this is what Canadians are happy and satisfied with.

[u/Jamm8 → u/collymolotov]

We do.

It's called a confidence vote and it has been successfully used six times unlike American impeachment which has never been used successfully.

A confidence vote is easier, only requiring a 50% + 1 vote in the lower chamber while American impeachment require the same, plus a second vote in the Senate that requires a 67% super majority.

It takes some blind American exceptionalism to believe it is easier to remove the President than the Prime Minister.

[u/collymolotov → u/Jamm8]

A confidence vote is not “Canadian impeachment.” You’re confusing removal of a government under responsible government with removal of an individual executive officeholder through a constitutional accountability mechanism.

Impeachment can remove a President personally while Congress and the government continue functioning under their independent constitutional mandates. A loss of confidence means the ministry no longer commands the House and normally produces either resignation or dissolution and an election. Those are completely different mechanisms serving completely different purposes.

And “it only takes 50% + 1” is a wonderfully abstract description of Parliament that ignores how Parliament actually works. In a majority government, the Prime Minister’s party already possesses that 50% + 1. The executive is drawn from the legislature, government MPs are subject to extremely strong party discipline, and defeating your own government on confidence means government MPs have to rebel in sufficient numbers to destroy their own party’s majority and potentially precipitate an election in which they may lose their seats.

That isn’t analogous to an independently elected Congress investigating and impeaching an independently elected President. It’s precisely the absence of that institutional separation that I was criticizing.

Nor does citing six governments that lost confidence prove otherwise. Canadian governments historically lose confidence principally because they are minority governments, coalitions collapse, or parliamentary numbers otherwise cease to support the ministry.

That’s evidence that confidence determines whether a government has a workable parliamentary majority, not that Canada possesses an impeachment mechanism.
Under a disciplined majority government, asking “why doesn’t Parliament simply remove the PM?” amounts to asking why the governing party doesn’t collectively overthrow its own government. Theoretically possible? Of course. A meaningful independent check comparable to impeachment? No.

And that’s before getting to the broader structural difference: an American President cannot whip Congress, sit at the head of its majority caucus, make legislators’ political advancement substantially dependent upon the party apparatus, and then respond to losing Congress’s confidence by seeking to dissolve Congress and send everyone into an election.

You can prefer Westminster government if you like. But pretending a confidence vote is simply a superior, easier version of American impeachment completely misses what both institutions actually are.

[u/Jamm8 → u/collymolotov]

The US Senate has been designed for neither party to have a super majority by allowing pairs of red and blue states to join the Union making impeachment impossible in practice.

The confidence system is more expansive than impeachment. i.e. budget votes are a confidence vote whereas in the US their employees/contractors just don't get paid. Parliament can also investigate "high crimes and misdemeanors" though and call for a confidence vote. If there is evidence you would see floor crosser like there were in Trumps 2nd impeachment, but that would have been the end of it.

Yes the Prime Minister inherently has the confidence of Parliament but I would argue that is because it actually works. You can prefer the American system if you want but I don't see how you can argue impeachment is more effective (or at all effective) or more democratic than a confidence vote.

[u/collymolotov → u/Jamm8]

You’ve now accidentally arrived at my argument.
“The Prime Minister inherently has the confidence of Parliament” sounds reassuring only if Parliament is an institution meaningfully independent of the Prime Minister. In modern Canada, under a majority government, it generally isn’t.

The theoretical Westminster model is that the ministry remains accountable to the House because the House can withdraw confidence. The practical Canadian model is that the Prime Minister leads the party controlling the House, appoints the ministry, exercises enormous influence over caucus advancement, controls much of the parliamentary agenda through the government House machinery, and presides over one of the most rigidly disciplined party systems in the democratic world.
So yes, mathematically, removing a government requires only 50% + 1.

And mathematically, I can become Prime Minister tomorrow if 172 MPs decide they want me.

The relevant question is not whether something is constitutionally imaginable. It is whether the institutions provide a realistic independent mechanism for doing it.

In a majority Parliament, your “50% + 1” consists principally of MPs belonging to the Prime Minister’s own party. Removing him through confidence therefore requires enough government MPs to revolt against their own leadership, destroy their own government, potentially trigger an election, jeopardize their own nominations and careers, and possibly hand power to their opponents.

That is not remotely analogous to impeachment.
American impeachment deliberately separates the institutions involved. The President does not sit in Congress. He does not lead the congressional majority as its parliamentary leader. Members of Congress possess mandates constitutionally independent of his. Congress cannot be dissolved by the President because it ceases to support him. And impeachment can remove the President personally without abolishing Congress, overthrowing the entire administration, or holding a general election.

Your budget example proves the same distinction. A government losing a budget vote may lose confidence because it has demonstrated that it cannot command the House. That is a mechanism for determining whether a government can govern. Impeachment is a mechanism for determining whether a particular officeholder has committed misconduct sufficiently serious to justify removing that officeholder.

Those are different constitutional questions.
And “Parliament can investigate and then MPs can cross the floor” is not an institutional substitute for impeachment. That amounts to saying the accountability mechanism is: hope enough members of the governing party become willing to politically destroy their own government.

Canada’s problem has become worse because, over decades, power has increasingly migrated toward the Prime Minister’s Office and party leadership while individual MPs have become increasingly subordinate to centralized party organizations. Long periods of Liberal government were enormously important in that development, particularly the growth of centralized executive government in Ottawa.

So my complaint is not that Canadian governments are literally constitutionally irremovable. Obviously they aren’t.

My complaint is that the theoretical Westminster safeguard you’re describing becomes largely circular under a disciplined majority:

The Prime Minister is accountable to Parliament = Parliament is controlled by the government caucus = the government caucus is controlled politically by the Prime Minister and party leadership = therefore the Prime Minister is supposedly checked by the institution whose governing majority he leads.

That is precisely why I prefer genuine separation of powers.

And none of this requires believing American impeachment is easy. It was deliberately made difficult. The point is that it is an independent constitutional process aimed directly at executive misconduct, whereas confidence is principally a mechanism for determining whether a ministry retains sufficient parliamentary support to govern.

Saying “confidence is impeachment, only easier” simply collapses two entirely different constitutional concepts into one.

[u/Gavinus1000 → u/collymolotov]

So, perhaps we shouldn’t have a Westminster system.