Those Alpha Centurions, they're eating the cats! They're eating the dogs!

>Should we criticize guns for all the school massacres ? BAD GUNS !

Why, yes we should.

Current administration policy seems to be shoot first ... I was going to say ask questions later, but not really. More along the lines of postmortem character assassination to justify excessive force.

Sir John Kerr didn't wait for Gough Whitlam's government to ask his advice when he dismissed Kerr and his government. Quite the opposite, the minute Whitlam got a hint that the Governor General might fire him his first thought was to get a hold of the Queen to fire Kerr.

The moment a government in a Westminster parliament loses a confidence vote, they become a caretaker government, a very constitutionally bounded creature. More importantly, their ability to advise the Sovereign/Governor General becomes extremely limited; they can't advise the GG to make new appointments, make most orders in council, or pretty much anything beyond keep basic organs of government going.

In a no confidence situation, it becomes the Governor General's job to figure out what to do next, and the government, being a caretaker, no longer can advise on the use of Royal Prerogatives such as dissolution or appointing new ministers (a new government).

A caretaker PM can certainly tell the GG what he thinks, but as happened in British Columbia in 2017, when the Premier of the province, having lost a confidence motion on the Throne Speech, tried to convince the Lieutenant-Governor to dissolve the legislature and call new elections, the vice-regal representative is under none of the obligations that a premier or PM who enjoys the confidence of Parliament has. In that case, the LG simply rejected the advice, and asked the opposition leader to form a government.

This is why the concept of confidence (and its loss) is far a better moderator of government excesses than the much older notion of impeachment. The latter evolved as Parliament in England gained more authority, but could not directly go after the King, so would often go after the King's ministers and agents through the use of impeachment. But even by the American revolution, impeachment in the Westminster constitutional order had fallen into disuse in preference to confidence. One of the first governments to fall to a loss of confidence was the Ministry of Lord North, after the defeat of the British in the War of Independence.

In general, I don't think someone of Trump's demeanor would ever be able to get away with as much in a Westminster government. Boris Johnson probably pushed the margins as much as any modern Prime Minister in the UK, and in the end he was effectively removed by his own party. It was an even swifter judgment for Liz Truss, who ended up serving the shortest amount of time as PM, beating George Canning, who died in office after 119 days in 1827.

Here in BC we've had multiple Premiers forced to resign. The closest analog to Trump was Bill Vander Zalm, who was accused of a serious conflict of interest over the sale of one his personal properties. He hung on for some time after the allegations became public, and while he ultimately resigned in disgrace, his cabinet was sufficiently worried that he might ignore all pleas to depart that they they hatched a scheme with the Lieutenant-Governor to have the government vote no confidence in itself, which would have forced Vander Zalm to resign, and then the Lieutenant-Governor would ask the designated member of cabinet to form a new government.

In short, in the Westminster system, the Sovereign and his representatives hold certain reserve powers that function as negative powers; almost never used, but the mere fact that they do not accessible by the government of the day creates a ceiling on the constitutional games that can be played. What's more, there are both visible ways to get rid of errant PMs and Premiers (leadership reviews, cabinet revolts, caucus revolts) and much quieter ones (ministers using their access to the King/GG/LG to get around a head of government).

The US put all its eggs in one basket by making a unified singular executive with powers commensurate with a Tudor-era monarch, the Westminster system created a split executive, with an Efficient part that does all the ruling, and a Dignified part that reigns.

The wealthy aren't going to go first, and the sacrifices will be imposed. Oddly enough, the universe doesn't give a fuck how you feel.

He did no such thing, and warned against Brexit, which caused the economic crash.

You do know we can tell when you're lying.

85% of the population lives in urban areas, the average commute time is well under half an hour. Quit making shit up.

I live in southern BC. We haven't had a snowfall here that lasted more than a few hours, and almost the entire winter has been above 0.

People have raised families in all manner of housing arrangements. Don't confuse cultural norms with actual human requirements.

Your way of life is effectively subsidized, and at some point it simply will not be affordable. The difficulty supplying water alone in many parts of the US will basically cause suburbs to die. Your notion of personal freedoms cannot override reality, no matter how often you pound the table.

Yeah, I have no more confidence in the states, or sufficient numbers of states, to solve the problem than an amendment.

Jesus you fucking Trumpers are a pack of idiots. Christ almighty, we actually have an economist running the country, you have a fucking moron knee deep in dementia, who was a raving idiot even when he wasn't rotting.

How do you define "out of control". Canada's credit rating, even with the economic assaults of our neighbor, remains very good and very stable. There's no massive hike in borrowing costs.

It's almost as if you're just making shit up.