It's the same issue here. Conservatives in power (right), Liberals in opposition (left/center) hold the bulk of the seats, NDP (left) and Bloc (left/separatist

It's the same issue here. Conservatives in power (right), Liberals in opposition (left/center) hold the bulk of the seats, NDP (left) and Bloc (left/separatists) hold the remainder. The NDP doesn't have enough seats to help the Cons on their own, and being propped up solely by separatists is seen as distasteful so support for a vote must come from either both smaller parties, or from the Liberals abstaining (the opposition looks bad when voting with the gov't!). Yet here we are, years later and for the most part it has worked ok. The biggest problem is that parties are always in semi-campaign mode as whenever a money vote is lost by the gov't we'll have an election. This has resulted in some stupidities like targeted tax credits for specific groups (ex: families with kids in sports) that are not good policy, but simply vote buying.