If there is one thing that Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau agree on, it's the election outcome that frightens them the most.
That would be that delicate matter of what happens if no one wins enough seats next month to form a majority government.
Harper made some puzzling remarks this week about the scenario.
Harper insists it is the right of the party that wins the most seats to form government.
He says he "would not serve as prime minister" if his party finished second.
Puzzling because it completely disregards the elements of the Westminster system of government that Canada has followed since Confederation.
If you don't recall your high school social studies class, here's a quick primer.
In a constitutional monarchy like Canada, the Queen is the head of state and the Governor General is her representative.
After a federal election, the Governor General invites the leader of the party that won the most seats in the House of Commons to form government.
If that party won a majority of the seats in the election, that leader can govern and pass legislation without the co-operation of the other leaders and parties. There are 338 seats up for grabs in this election so a majority will be 170 seats (169 plus one).
If the party that wins the most seats doesn't reach 170 seats, the Governor General will still invite that leader to form a government but the prime minister will need the support of another party and its leader to have enough votes to pass legislation.
Harper spent his first five years as prime minister governing this way, with the majority of the seats split up between the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals and the NDP. He sought support for various bills on a case-by-case basis, rather than forming an allegiance with one of the other parties.
Harper paints such a coalition as anti-democratic yet it's a key component of the Westminister model and perfectly legal.
If a minority government is defeated in a non-confidence vote in the House of Commons, that doesn't automatically mean another election. In the interest of government stability, the Governor General must approach the leader of the party that won the second-most seats to see if that leader can form government.
Through either a formal or an informal agreement with another party or parties, that leader with the second-most seats could legally form government.
So if Canadians woke up on Oct. 20 to learn the Conservatives had won 120 seats, the NDP 110 seats, the Liberals 100 seats and the Greens eight seats, the Governor General would ask Harper to form a government. At the first sitting of the House of Commons, the opposing parties could combine their 218 votes to easily defeat the Conservatives.
The Governor General could then ask Tom Mulcair to form an NDP government.
Notice how this specific scenario makes Trudeau and the Liberals into kingmakers, meaning that a Harper Conservative government survives with Liberal support but so does a Mulcair NDP government. Trudeau says he would co-operate with other parties to pass legislation in a minority government but that could mean different things.
He could be a passive supporter, informally propping up either party by demanding changes to various bills that satisfies the Liberal political agenda and then casting supportive votes.
He could, however, demand to be an active supporter with a more formal hands-on arrangement. So imagine a Canada where either Harper or Mulcair is prime minister, Trudeau is finance minister and the rest of the cabinet is a blend of either Conservatives and Liberals or NDP and Liberals.
Not only is this allowed, the Westminister system encourages these kinds of creative outcomes to avoid an endless cycle of elections and to force parties and elected representatives to work together.
Those options are what nightmares are made of for all three main party leaders.
They are all asking voters to elect a strong, majority government with them in charge because majority rule doesn't require compromise with political opponents, only an iron discipline of the party caucus.
The leaders see minorities as chaos. Many Canadians might see it as forced collaboration.
On a related note, check out our 2015 election page online at pgc.cc/exln2015 and take part in our #yourvotematters campaign.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
