What happens if a majority of the House of Commons votes against a major government decision?

Discover Canada records this in one direct sentence about the parliamentary system. The guide writes: Cabinet ministers are responsible to the elected representatives, which means they must retain the "confidence of the House" and have to resign if they are defeated in a non-confidence vote. The outcome the test wants is therefore the government must resign after defeat — and an election is the standard alternative.

Two precise commitments. Discover Canada commits the parliamentary-confidence rule to TWO specific facts: (1) Cabinet ministers must retain the "confidence of the House"; (2) they have to resign if they are defeated in a non-confidence vote. So the source ties cabinet survival to maintaining majority support in the House of Commons. A confidence vote is the formal mechanism by which the House expresses or withholds that support.

The principle has a long history in Canadian government. Discover Canada commits the responsible-government principle to a specific named definition: "This is the system that we have today: if the government loses a confidence vote in the assembly it must resign." So the modern Canadian system uses the same principle that was first introduced under Lord Elgin in 1848–49 when the governor of United Canada introduced responsible government. The principle traces back further to Nova Scotia's 1847–48 attainment of full responsible government.

Cabinet accountability is the foundation. Discover Canada commits Canada's parliamentary system to a specific cabinet-accountability framework. The Prime Minister selects the Cabinet ministers and is responsible for the operations and policy of the government. The Cabinet ministers, in turn, must hold the elected House of Commons' confidence — meaning the elected representatives in the House have the ultimate power to keep or remove the government. The defeat in a non-confidence vote means the named cabinet (and thus the named government) loses the support that allows it to govern. After such a defeat, the convention is that the government either resigns or asks the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election. So the elected House of Commons, in practical terms, has the power to bring down the government — a foundational protection of parliamentary democracy. So when the test asks what happens if a majority of the House of Commons votes against the government, the source-precise answer is the government is defeated and must resign — typically followed by either resignation or an election.

The question is testing whether new citizens know what happens when the government loses a confidence vote. Discover Canada commits to one outcome: the government must resign if defeated in a non-confidence vote. The right test answer matches that.

The wrong answer choices each substitute a different outcome. The first choice — "nothing happens" — reverses the source: the government must resign. The third choice — Senate reversal — describes a power the Senate does not have over the elected government. The fourth choice — Governor General decides — misunderstands the constitutional convention; the Governor General acts on advice, not on personal preference. Only the resign-or-call-an-election outcome — the source's exact named consequence — matches.