Cheesy ads. Politicians yelling half-truths on TV. Lawn signs everywhere in many colours. Yes, a federal election is coming up in Canada this October. It would be a good idea for you to become familiar with the Canadian political system, if you aren’t already.
Modern governments are divided into three branches with three different roles: a) the legislative branch, which makes laws, b) the executive branch, which enforces laws which have been made, and c) the judicial branch, which interprets laws when there’s a dispute about what they mean. A democracy is a country where we, the people, get to make our own laws. We do this by voting, every few years, for people to represent us in the legislative branch of government.
Most countries have a written document called a constitution which acts as the supreme law of the land. In Canada, the constitution consists of two documents, one written in 1867 when we became a country, which sets up our political system and divvies up powers between the federal and provincial governments, and the second written in 1982, which includes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing basic human rights for us, plus a number of amendments which have been made in the years since then. Nobody is allowed to do anything which violates the constitution.
The Monarch
Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The monarchy part means that we are ruled by a king or queen. If you’ve been living under a rock, the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, a British-born woman who also reigns over her native United Kingdom, Australia, Jamaica, and 11 other countries. She gets to do that because her ancestors conquered many other countries and built a worldwide British Empire.
Note that Canada is an independent country. So if we wanted to, Canada could amend the constitution to make you or me the monarch tomorrow, or even get rid of the monarchy altogether; it’s just that nobody has done this. Since the Queen doesn’t actually live in Canada, there is a person called the Governor-General (GG) who lives in Ottawa, and represents the Queen. That means that whenever the Queen isn’t in the country (which is, like, 99% of the time), he gets to exercise all the powers the Queen has. The current GG is David Johnston, former president of the University of Waterloo.
Canada being a constitutional monarchy means that the Queen or the Governor-General can’t just do whatever the hell they want. They have to follow the Constitution just like the rest of us. Technically, the Queen is the legislative, executive, and judicial branch all combined. However, because of the 1867 Constitution Act, she really doesn’t have power to do much out of her own will.
The Legislative Branch
Under the Constitution, the Queen’s lawmaking powers are delegated to Parliament. Parliament consists of two assemblies: the House of Commons and the Senate.
The House of Commons (or “House” for short) is made up of 308 members (MPs), elected from cities and other districts across Canada. Depending on where you live, one out of these 308 people represents you. If they vote for laws you don’t like, you can vote for someone else to replace them at the next election. (To be honest, you’ll often find there isn’t someone you trust completely, so you’ll have to pick the least incompetent man or woman for the job, but that’s a whole other story.)
The Senate is made up of 105 members which are appointed; in theory, by the Queen, but in practice, by the Prime Minister. Senators remain in their jobs permanently until they are 75, then they must retire.
As Canada is a democracy, power is concentrated in the elected House of Commons. The Senate is only supposed to reject a bill if there is something seriously wrong with it; otherwise, its role is mostly limited to suggesting improvements to bills that the House has already agreed to. (If you’re cynical, the Senate exists to give pensions to the Prime Minister’s cronies …)
The Executive Branch
Some laws require the government to do something, while other laws bind ordinary people like you and me. The executive branch’s job is to follow the laws which bind the government, and to ensure that ordinary people are following the laws which bind them. It is divided into a number of departments, such as Public Safety Canada, which runs the police and the intelligence agencies, or Health Canada, which funds our health care.
Each department is supervised by a politician, called “Minister of National Defence”, “Minister of Health”, etc. There is also an overall leader who supervises the entire executive branch, called the Prime Minister. The Queen or GG appoints the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister appoints the other ministers. The Prime Minister and his other ministers together form a group called the “Cabinet”.
The Cabinet is in turn accountable to the elected House of Commons – at any time, if a majority of MPs reject a particularly important bill (such as a budget), then the entire Cabinet loses their jobs. If this happens, the MPs who passed the no-confidence motion can recommend the GG appoint one of them as the new Prime Minister, or (more commonly) agree to a new election. This ensures that the executive branch is ultimately accountable to the people. Essentially, the PM only remains in power if a majority of the elected House of Commons wants him to.
In Canada, almost all MPs belong to a political party, an organized group of politicians with similar opinions and beliefs. Most political parties require all their MPs to support their party leader’s position (called the “party line”) when voting on important bills. This sometimes causes conflicts, because an MP doesn’t necessarily agree with everything their party leader believes in.
When one party receives a majority of the seats in the House, that party’s leader will be appointed as Prime Minister, and the other ministers will usually also be from the same party. (This is currently the case with the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper’s cabinet.) In this situation, the PM is basically invulnerable – he will always be able to count on the votes of his own party’s MPs, and he will not have to fear being sacked by the House of Commons.
However, if no single party has a majority of the seats in the House (this is called a “hung parliament”), then it’s a little more complicated. Usually, the leader of the largest party will still be appointed Prime Minister, but they need to be more careful, because they need to always have enough MPs from outside of their party support them to remain in power. In this scenario it is possible for the leader of a smaller party to end up being the PM, as long as they get the required majority support from the House of Commons.
The Process of Making Laws
A bill can be introduced either by an MP or a senator, with one exception: a bill which involves finances or budgeting can only be proposed by an MP, because it’s not fair to propose ways to spend the people’s tax money without having been elected by the people. If a majority of the MPs and a majority of the senators support a bill, then it is taken to the GG’s office to be signed and proclaimed on behalf of the Queen (this is called Royal Assent), which officially makes it into a law.
Over the years, an extensive system has developed to pass laws. In each house of Parliament, there are three stages called “readings” that the bill must successfully clear, in order to be passed. The first reading is for the bill to be formally introduced into Parliament. There are so many bills proposed each year that there simply isn’t enough time to debate all of them. So there’s a system: Cabinet-introduced bills get priority. Private members’ bills – bills introduced by anyone else – are placed into a lottery to determine which ones actually get to be introduced.
The second reading consists of a debate followed by a vote on the general idea of the bill. After the second reading, the bill is referred to a smaller committee to be considered in detail. This committee can then call experts to come and give their opinions. After these expert hearings, committees will often propose amendments to the bill. Parliament then has a chance to accept or reject these amendments.
The third reading consists of a final debate and a vote on passing the bill exactly as written, after the committee amendments. Note that after third reading, a bill must pass through the same three stages in the other house before it becomes law.
Parliament is allowed to delegate law-making powers to other bodies. For example, Parliament might say “Health Canada is to prevent Canadians from eating poisoned food”. Then, Health Canada would be responsible for coming up with the exact standards for how much mercury or lead is allowed. So there are actually two types of laws: “acts”, which are passed by Parliament, and “regulations”, which are created by another branch of government, under delegated power from Parliament.
The Judicial Branch
The judicial branch consists of a number of courts, made up of judges whose job is to figure out who’s right when there’s a dispute about the law. Judges are appointed by the GG on the advice of the PM. Once appointed, it is very difficult to remove them from office. Unlike the legislative and executive branches, judges are neither elected nor accountable to people who are elected. This is intentional, because if a majority ever tries to limit the rights of a minority, judges will be able to defend the minority’s rights without fear that the majority will vote them out. The only way a judge can be removed from office is if their peers (other judges) bring a charge of misconduct against them, and both the House of Commons and the Senate agree with the charge.
Courts are arranged in several levels, with the Supreme Court at the top. A court ruling from a lower court can be overruled by a higher court. The Supreme Court’s word, however, cannot be overruled (with one rare exception; see below) and is law.
Judges are allowed to nullify laws if they contradict the Constitution. This power exists as a check to prevent the government from becoming too powerful and passing laws which don’t jive with the basic rights that we have as Canadians.
But what if judges start abusing their powers? There is also a clause called the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution, which allows Parliament to temporarily suspend a court decision regarding certain rights of the Charter. This sounds sort of bad, but it’s meant for extreme scenarios. Let’s say the Supreme Court decides that because of freedom of speech, a militantly racist group gets to say whatever they want, including advocating genocide. Parliament can then suspend that court decision, but it is temporary – every five years, it has to be renewed with another vote in Parliament. The reason it lasts five years is that if Parliament abuses this power, the people have a chance to vote out those MPs at the next election.
Is this a perfect system? No, but it’s an attempt to balance out powers between the judges and the politicians to prevent reckless abuses of power.
Provincial Governments
Although up until this point, I have been talking about the federal government, provincial governments work largely the same way. The biggest difference is that there are no provincial senates, so the legislative branch is only one house. The provincial equivalent of the GG is called a Lieutenant-Governor, and the equivalent of the PM is called a Premier.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article has helped you understand better how the Canadian government works – if you want more information, check out former senator Eugene Forsey’s book of the same title (you can find a PDF on Parliament’s website).
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