Everything You Wanted To Know About Canada But Were Afraid To Ask

welcome to everything you wanted to know about Canada but we're afraid to ask we are a large northern landmass and by and large we have enjoyed 141 years of peace order and good government and our official summer sport is lacrosse basically that's all you need to know oh one other salient fact according to a recent Dominion Institute poll a majority of Canadians have no idea how Parliament works which is fine we're all very busy people we have lives to lead families to raise we're on hold with Rogers and to be honest it is perfectly understandable to enjoy something without knowing how it works such is Canada after decades of stability we were suddenly faced with minority governments talk of coalition's and the threat of an election every six and a half weeks but we took solace in the fact that we are one of the greatest democracies on this earth and at least we know who is ultimately in charge well not really when who is Canada's head of state seventy-five percent of Canadians could not answer the question and who can blame them the answer is ridiculous it is the Queen of England now for those of you unaware of her work she's an elderly lady of German descent who lives in a castle across the ocean in fact in order to become a Canadian citizen you must swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen and her ears luckily I was born here so I've never had to do it now unfortunately the Queen is a very busy woman she has nine dogs and when she doesn't have time to pay attention to Canada which is let's face it always she has a representative who lives in Ottawa and is in charge of Canada no not him next slide please the governor-general in the Queen's absence assumes all her responsibilities and duties and according to our Constitution must be of sound mind and have hosted an arts program on the CBC okay that's not true there's no test for her being of sound mind in this country nothing happens until the governor-general says it does laws do not get passed Parliament does not sit elections cannot be called we do not even go to war unless she says so but to be fair she takes her orders from the Government of Canada after all we are a democracy although granted it may not seem like it yet so who runs this great democracy well according to the polling a majority of Canadians believe that Stephen Harper was elected directly by the people of Canada to run this country unfortunately for Stephen that's not true he holds the office of Prime Minister but he was elected as a simple member of parliament and the only reason he's the Prime Minister is because in his other job he's the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and if he walked away tomorrow the party would just pick some mother dude to be Prime Minister and we'd have nothing to say about it it could be this dude or it could be this dude or it could be no it couldn't be that dude okay but wait it gets weirder the Prime Minister only keeps his job as long as he enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons which means on an important vote a majority of members regardless of party must stand up and say yes we support you and if they don't well then it is back to hanging out in your strip mall constituency office in Calgary southwest humiliating yes but the advantage of our system is that if our Prime Minister decides to do something completely insane we have a mechanism to remove him almost immediately and some countries they don't enjoy that luxury and when a Prime Minister loses the confidence of the house the governor-general if the Queen is not in town will dissolve Parliament and call an election or she can go behind door number two and ask another party leader if they have the confidence of the house if the answer is yes then they become the Prime Minister that's the way our system works now Stephen Harper found himself in this position less than nine weeks ago after his government announced that in their best estimation after crunching all the numbers after taking in all the information Canada was in fine financial shape and would post surpluses for the next five years now some people raised an eyebrow other people like every leading economist in the country raised - as a result a majority of MPs made it clear that if he didn't come clean with the numbers they would fire him and form a new government some people may call this a loss of confidence others may call it an intervention and at this point the governor-general probed the House of Commons prorogued being Latin for technical difficulties please stand by Canadians were confused and Stephen Harper's caucus provided calming analysis Pierre Blackburn said the opposition was attempting a coup d'etat a violent overthrow of a duly elected government bob Deckert he called it treason punishable by life in prison and heritage Minister James Moore said my dog wears a raincoat all of these statements are patently untrue except for the raincoat which is just embarrassing the important thing here is despite the hyperbole Stephen Harper fearing for his job said oops on second thought we looked at the numbers again mistakes were made charts were held upside down is actually going to post an 87 billion dollar deficit whoops when the dust settled Stephen Harper was still the prime minister and Canadians finally had a clear picture of the economy and the important thing to know is that despite the confusion to talk of coalition and the ridiculous accusations of treason and the suspension of Parliament by an unelected former broadcaster a system that seemed to be broken was actually hard at work and that is everything you wanted to know about Canada but were afraid to ask god save the queen

Channel: rowtow13

Views: 32,412

Rating: 4.8486485 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Mercer, Mercer Report, Canada, Government, Politics, Governer General

Id: 3vqyfY7cZPk

Length: 6min 46sec (406 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/DylanVincent]

In fact she is the Queen of Canada too.

[u/apathos_destroys]

To be a Canadian citizen, you have to be born here. To become a Canadian citizen, you have to jump through some legal hoops.

Let's not get the two confused. I haven't sworn myself to anyone.

[u/10thDoctorBestDoctor]

This is highly misleading.

[u/[deleted]]

You guys are idiots. How does it feel having Royalty?

[u/8livesdown]

Just goes to show that if we hadn't fought the revolutionary war, quite likely very little would change.