Reddit reviews The Friendly Dictatorship

In the order that I would rank them--

Lament for a Nation by George Grant


While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World by Andrew Cohen


The Friendly Dictatorship by Jeffrey Simpson


EDIT: These are particularly Canadian politics reads.

You should read Jeff Simpson's The Friendly Dictatorship for a perspective of Canadian politics under Chretien.

From Amazon...

"what he[Jeff Simpson] sees as the central problem with Canadian democracy: that, due to a combination of voter apathy, media manipulation, a faulty political system, and internal wrangling within opposition parties, the Chretien government has been allowed uncontested access to the leadership of the country. The checks and balances that might hold the government accountable are useless. Question Period in the House of Commons, for instance, "is political theatre" in a manner that, as presented by nightly newscasts, "suggests that otherwise normal people, upon becoming politicians, shout and holler and otherwise make such fools of themselves." While the Conservatives fight amongst themselves, thereby effectively eliminating any chance at consolidating the country's right, the labour-minded NDP has been completely at a loss"

Sound familiar?

http://www.amazon.ca/Friendly-Dictatorship-Jeffrey-Simpson/dp/0771080786

Check this book out from your local library for the pratical workings of majority government.

http://www.amazon.ca/Friendly-Dictatorship-Jeffrey-Simpson/dp/0771080786

The opposition has no power in a majority government.

However, it does matter if the majority is by one vote. For example, a few MPs can be sick or just too lazy to get to chamber to vote on bill x, y, or z. AFAIK there have been cases where the opposition has derailed government business by simply having more members in the house when a vote has come up.

>They will likely be unseated before we reach the 2030's.It's not the 20th century anymore where one party governs the country for like 2+ decades

I don't know if you remember, but before Adscam the Liberals were thought to be unbeatable, (hell on the wiki page for the 2004 election it says this "Earlier the election was widely expected to be a relatively easy romp for Martin to a fourth consecutive Liberal majority government, but early in 2004 Liberal popularity fell sharply due to the sponsorship scandal. Polls started to indicate the possibility of a minority government for the Liberals, or even a minority Conservative government, fueling speculation of coalitions with the other parties. In the end, the Liberals fared better than the final opinion polls had led them to fear, but well short of a majority.") so much so that one guy even wrote a book saying the Liberals were so unbeatable Canada might turn into a dictatorship and I really think that without adscam they could have stayed in power until the 2010's (after all, they were trusted on the economy, trusted on foreign affairs and with every passing election they were picking up more and more seats in Quebec so even if they lost some seats in Ontario due to the right wing vote being unified, (and I doubt they would have lost that many Ontario seats anyway) they had backup, and unseating a party like that is a monumental task).