How to vote in the federal election

Or they could just keep calling elections every 3 months or so, like Italy.

Yeah. Everyone who is afraid of coalitions picks Italy. Look at Switzerland. It has had the same stable coalition since 1959.

I am not too worried about who should be in a coalition in Canada. However there are no rules (eg must include largest party - never heard that one before) except that it must have the confidence of the house and therefore represent the most constituencies and most voters.

Perhaps the best coalition in a time of (economic) crisis would be a "Government of National Unity" with the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP. The Bloc could support it if they like (but would probably be put off by the name!)

In such a coalition a Conservative would have to lead it as PM, but it could not be Harper since no other party trusts him or would work with him. Someone like Prentice, Cannon or Strahl, or even Diane Ablonsky might be acceptable to all. But not one of Harper's ultra partisan pitbulls (Kenny or Baird). If Dion is still a sticking point in such a combination, I expect he could be persuaded to resign and the caucus could pick another interim leader until May.

Coalitions never work if the party with the most seats is excluded, unless they have the most seats by a very narrow margin as happened in Ontario once. But the he tories have nearly twice as many seats as the Liberals right now.

Switzerland has a completely different system of Govt. because it is a proper confederation and most of the power is held by the cantons rather than the central govt. The head of the govt. is rotated every six months.

I've always thought that the Swiss system actually would be quite a good idea for Canada because there is so much regional political variation across the country.

Which in fact is how the Swiss system came about because two-thirds speak German, a quarter speak French and most of the rest speak Italian as their first languages and it was the only way to keep the country together.

The reason they were neutral in both world wars is because it would have torn the country apart to side with anyone.

Look, we elected a Parliament with no majority therefor this is what should happen:
The GG asks the leader of the largest party is he can form a government with the confidence of the House.
If the answer is no she then must ask the Leader of the Opposition
You cannot simply lock up the doors of Parliament because you're afraid of loosing a confidence vote-Paul Martin didn't, Joe Clark didn't King didn't so why is Harper allowed to?

The GG has very limited powers, basically the PM asks her to do something and she can say yes or no. And to say no to a PM is very rarely done.