An election campaign that began slowly appears headed for a corker of a finish Monday, when Canadians vote for Prime Minister. Political junkies argue it’s a seminal vote so electors might want to think carefully before marking an “X” beside their choice for PM: Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff, Gilles Duceppe or Elizabeth May.

Wait. Hold on. Not!

You didn’t fall for that, right? You know that’s not how we do it. Canadians don’t vote directly for the PM, but rather for a member of Parliament in 308 ridings across the country.

The scary part, say public policy experts, is that too many Canadians don’t know. The Dominion Institute, a national think-tank, released an Ipsos-Reid poll in 2008 showing 51 per cent of respondents believe the Prime Minister is elected by direct ballot. And subsequent studies are just as discouraging.

“There’s not the level of engagement we’d like to see. Canadians don’t have the basic tools in their tool kits to understand the history or politics of the country,” said Jeremy Diamond, the institute’s managing director. “A poll in 2009 showed only 40 per cent knew the first Prime Minister was John A. Macdonald.”

In another study, only 33 per cent could identify the Battle of Vimy Ridge as a critical Canadian World War I victory that “consisted of the capture of a key ridge,” he said.

“Half the answer was in the question” — and respondents still didn’t get it.

And this is troubling why?

Because, said Diamond, “it could affect our vote. It may be we’re not knowledgeable enough to go to the polls and make decisions about who can represent us. When we’re ill-informed we’re making choices without all the facts.”

It can also affect how we interpret what happens after the May 2 vote.

Carleton University journalism professor Elly Alboim says we could be going into an election in which “May 3 may just be the beginning of the story.”

The way the polls have been shifting over the past 10 days, the result could be one of several scenarios, depending on how the votes shake out in our parliamentary democracy.

It would probably be a good idea, Alboim argues, for Canadians to understand the significance of these scenarios before they occur in order to better deal with them.

For years, the Dominion Institute has raised the alarm that we’re losing our history and understanding of our political system. Only four provinces — Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia — even require Canadian history as a mandatory course in high school.

We’re a TV-show nation, often fans of American television and movies. We’ve gotten involved in how Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlet battled for votes on The West Wing, often forgetting the American president runs an independent campaign.

“There’s no doubt Canadians form a lot of their understanding from American TV,” said Alboim.

Canadians even watch American legal shows and mistakenly believe Canadian police have to read them their Miranda rights — the right to remain silent, etc. — before arresting them.

“I think what we have in Canada is a failure to understand and respect our own history,” said Diamond. “Canadians are not very good at telling their stories and we live beside a monster nation that is very good at telling its stories.”

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At Carleton, Alboim says the faculty had to create a civics course for second-year journalism students some years ago because they didn’t understand how our major institutions work, including Parliament and the courts. It consists of 12 three-hour classes.

“We realized they didn’t know the basics of the parliamentary system,” he said. “There was a lack of understanding of responsible government.”

Alboim first became aware of a problem when he was CBC-TV’s parliamentary bureau chief in the early 1990s and Reform leader Preston Manning started talking about how MPs had to vote according to the wishes of their constituencies. That may be the wise thing to do if MPs want to be re-elected, but it’s not required under Canadian party politics.

“I think it’s really important to know the scenarios that could be coming” after the election is over, Alboim says. “They are potentially difficult but they could have both legitimacy and constitutional authority.”

It could be easy. There could be a majority government with no muss, no fuss. But if a party has the most votes — a plurality — but not at least half of the elected MPs, things get tricky. We’re back in the minority government territory of Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the past five years.

Optics matter. A strong minority would mitigate against opposition parties trying to bring down the government. A weak minority might do the opposite.

“The Prime Minister governs with the consent of the House,” said Alboim. “It may be an appropriate course of action if the government falls for there to be another election. Or it may be more appropriate to turn to another party that has the confidence of the House (or parties) to govern without having another election.”

While that would be legal, he added it may not be “politically wise” to defeat a minority government that received strong support from voters.

Peter Russell, editor emeritus in political science at the University of Toronto and a leading constitutional expert, argues “our system of parliamentary democracy is the most successful form of democracy in the world.”

But there’s an important element to remember.

“The basics of our system are simple. We elect the Parliament and the Parliament decides who gets the right to govern,” Russell said. “That’s it.”

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