Inquiry into the Issue

Inquiry into the Issue

As a young citizen, you will already have had some experience with one of the three levels of government in Canada: local, provincial, or federal governments. Your community may require your dog to have a tag or licence, you are a student in a provincial education system, and you are protected by the laws passed by the federal government. Each level of government works for the people, making your community, province, and country a place where you want to live.

In the previous section, you established how decisions of the government of Canada can influence your identity, your quality of life, and your citizenship. But how does a government that is centralized in Ottawa, Ontario, look after the needs of all Canadians? After all, there are more than 33 million people in Canada, and, geographically, Canada is the second largest country in the world (larger than China or the United States).

To govern all of Canada, the federal government is divided into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.

To begin to understand how each of these branches of government work for you, explore the information below.

Inquiry Activity

 Read

Read carefully the diagram on page 22 of the textbook.

Note the three branches of the Canadian federal government and their components.