Canadian Political
Structure
Canadian Political
Structure
Countries have governments for many different reasons. The government takes care of the needs of the general population. Governments control things like hospitals, roads, mail, laws, national defense, and international relations. But most of all a government tries to bring order to the lives of its citizens.
Descriptions of Canada's Government
Canada's government can be very difficult to understand. It is a complex system that can be described in four ways. The government can be called a Constitutional Monarchy, a Federal System, a Party System, and a Representative Democracy.
The term constitutional monarchy means that the country is associated with some sort of Monarch (royal figure), while the actual governing of the country is done by an elected body.
Canada has a federal structure because of its vast size. This system of government was created to ensure that the needs of the country as a whole were not jeopardized by the needs of its distinct regions.
People elected to positions in the government are members of a political party. A political party is a group of people that have common goals and beliefs about how the government should run the country, province, or town. The major political parties in Canada are the Liberals, the Progressive Conservatives, the New Democratic Party, the Reform party, and the Bloc Quebecois.
A democracy is country that is untimately run by its people. Canada falls into this category because we elect representatives to do the governing for us. This makes Canada a representative democracy.
The federal parliament has power over many areas of the country. Some of these areas are international trade, taxation, national defence, shipping, currency, banking, citizenship, and criminal law.There are three main branches to the federal government, and each one of these branches has special components.
Executive Legislative Judiciary - Queen - House of Commons - Supreme Court of - Prime Minister - Senate Canada - Cabinet
Executive power is the power to run the country and carry out the laws.
Legislative power is the power to make laws.
Judicial power deals with deciding who has broken the law, and what penalties they should receive.
Canada has three levels of government. This structure can be thought of as a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid is the Federal government, which looks out for the needs of the country. In the middle of the pyramid is the Provincial level of government. Each province and territory has a government to look out for its own special needs. Finally, at the bottom of the pyramid is the Municipal level. This level consists of different cities and towns having their own type of government to look after their special needs.
Canadian Sites
Provincial Sites
Bibliographical Information
All this information comes from the textbook titled:
Canada Today, Second Edition
By: Angus Scully, Carl Smith, and Daniel McDevitt
Prentice-Hall Canada Inc. 1988