It's the drawback to having a greater than two-party system. His minority government got about 33% of the popular vote, but took a larger number of ridings than the other 4ish or so parties. Then they form a coalition, usually with the parties that came third or fourth, (however much they need to form a 'majority') to hold power as long as they can. A weird twist is that sometimes the third-place party has more power than the first-ranked, by threatening to withhold support for a bill that they don't like.
And that's what I recall from my Canadian civics classes decades ago.
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