What you're leaving out, in Canada's case, is that the norm is a strict party-line vote. In rare cases, the PM will allow a "conscience vote", where individuals vote as they will; in every other case, you vote as your party directs or you're kicked out of the party. As party-line voting is the norm, sitting as an independent is basically worthless in terms of accomplishing anything--no access to party resources or assignments.

So in practice, the PM of a majority gov't (i.e., has a majority of seats) gets to pass whatever they want to pass; the saving grace of this is that, without having to haggle and herd cats and trade horses, the legislation is the legislation--there's no poison pills, no payoff amendments, no loopholes to capture one person's support, and no extreme bits to trade away. It's just "this is the law we want", which I think leads to higher quality legislation over all.

The PM of a minority gov't (i.e., only has a plurality of seats) may have to secure another party's vote to pass, but that's a negotiation with a second entity, not a hundred other voting entities.

Consensus doesn't play a significant part in it, I believe. Within the bounds of the law, the PM of a majority is nearly a polite dictator.

This all very true but I just wanted to add one more thing I think is a strength of parliaments.

In a parliament majority, the buck stops with the Prime Minister and win or lose his performance is on the line in the next election. There's no (effective) hand-waving about opposition or other excuses to deflect accountability. Elections are a black/white referendum of the incumbent's performance.

In the US it's a lot easier to muddy the waters and a lot harder for people to arrive at a clear conclusion and often nobody is happy.

"YES I don't like X BUT it wasn't Y's fault it was Z"

I agree with this, and I would further add that "confidence votes", where if the vote fails, the gov't falls, are another valuable safety hatch. Budgetary votes are always confidence votes, but anyone can move for a vote of no-confidence if they have the votes. With a majority gov't, this is hard to do unless the majority is slim and a couple people are sick (or "cross the aisle", switching parties), but with minority gov'ts it's a significant risk--the PM can't afford to alienate a large enough number of MPs to falll to a confidence vote, which is literally a ten-minute affair if it occurs. US politics has nothing of this effectiveness.

> What you're leaving out, in Canada's case, is that the norm is a strict party-line vote.

No, I'm not. The concept of a party whip literally invented where I'm from. I'm very much familiar with it.

Consensus building? If a party in Canada gets a majority in Parliament, they can pass whatever bills they want (the senate rarely intervenes unless it's really controversial). And individual MPs have much less leeway to stray from the party line.

The US system is much more adversarial. Even if a single party gets the house, senate and presidency, there isn't much stopping individual party members from voting against the party line.

It's true consensus is need with a coalition/minority government, but they don't seem to happen that often. Yes, I know there is one right now.

Well, that's what you get with FPTP, with both the US and Canada use.

> This is especially apparent in countries where a form of proportional representation is used for elections.

Proportional representation is almost a necessary condition for the parliamentary system to encourage consensus-building. More specifically, it's necessary that no party hold an absolute majority.

With first-past-the-post, you usually end up with one party having full control for one term, and no one to hold them accountable (particularly if you have the principle of parliamentary soverignity).

That assumes members of the legislature always vote with their own party, which they don't. Plus, there are usually two houses and the upper house can scrutinize and hold to account the lower house. In the UK it's an appointed (and partially hereditary) upper house, so there's less party discipline (although not none).

Except when you get fringe parties holding the balance of power.

With some of the NI parties screwing over conservative governments its why NI doesn't have the same laws as the UK

Well, that's _part_ of why, but the fundamental reason is that NI is the rump of the Kingdom of Ireland within the UK, which, like Scotland, preserved a separate legal system even after political union with the UK brought about through the 1800 Act of Union.

[Aside: An interesting consequence of this is that England lacks a legal and political identity separate from the UK as the UK is an _extension_ of the Kingdom of England. Another interesting this is that even though it was part of the Kingdom of England, Wales _does_ have a legal and political identity because there are acts of parliament that _explicitly_ refer to it. The UK is a constitutionally odd country.]