Andrew Scheer continues to insist that if his Conservatives win the most seats on Monday night, the party should be allowed to govern — even if it falls short of a majority.

But it’s not quite that simple.

Scheer repeatedly raised the spectre of a Liberal-NDP coalition on Thursday, suggesting such an arrangement would be illegitimate.

“It is quite clear that Justin Trudeau will do anything to try and stay on in power,” Scheer told supporters in Brampton.

“But what I’m saying is the party that wins the most seats should be able to form the government.”

In recent elections, the party that won the most seats has ended up forming the government. However, in a minority situation, things could get interesting.

If no party wins a clear majority in the House of Commons next week, Trudeau will still be the prime minister. But if his Liberals have won fewer seats than the Conservatives, he will face a choice: he can attempt to marshal support from MPs of other parties, either on a vote-by vote basis or through a formal coalition, or he can concede defeat, as Paul Martin did after Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won a plurality of seats in the 2006 federal election.

If Trudeau were to step down, the governor general would then either invite another party to attempt to form a government, or call another election.

The Conservatives governed with a minority of seats in Parliament after both the 2006 and 2008 elections.

“On Monday we will find out what Canadians vote for. I am very optimistic that we will win Monday’s election with a very strong mandate,” Scheer told reporters.

Trudeau has refused to answer questions about whether he’d form a coalition government with the New Democrats, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has tempered his earlier enthusiasm for a power-sharing agreement.

Campaigning Thursday morning in Welland, Ont., Singh blamed the potential electoral predicament of a hung Parliament on Trudeau, who broke his promise to change Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system. The NDP has pledged to bring in a new, more proportional system should it win power on Monday.

Asked whether he would try to keep the Conservatives from power even if they win more seats than the Liberals, Singh was unequivocal that he would do whatever he could to keep Scheer’s party from governing.

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“We don’t respect Conservatives, no,” Singh said, prompting laughter and applause from supporters.

“What I mean is that … just because Mr. Scheer thinks that if he gets a certain amount of seats that we’re going to give up fighting against Conservatives – no. We’re going to always fight Conservatives because we don’t believe in their cuts to services, we don’t believe in how they’re going to harm people. We’re going to fight that.”

With files from the Canadian Press

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