5.2.4 Canada's Parliamentary Democracy

As indicated in the diagram at the top of the page, the Executive branch is responsible for proposing and executing laws. They also run each ministry or department that is responsible for providing services to the people.

The Head of State in Canada is the Governor General. Because Canada is a constitutional monarchy, the monarch is the country's head of state. Because the British Queen cannot open Canada's Senate or sign every bill into law, she has a representative, which is the Governor General. This person is appointed by the Queen, usually on the request of the Prime Minister and they usually serve 6 years.

The Head of Government must be elected to the legislative branch. This is the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister selects the cabinet ministers (department heads for ministries) from the pool of elected Members of Parliament that sit in the House of Commons. They are directly responsible and must answer to the other elected Members of Parliament. As a result, the executive branch is embedded into the legislative branch in Canada, thus leading to the phrase 'responsible government'.

In republican presidential democracies, these two roles are combined into the President, who is not part of the legislative branch and is not accountable to them in the same way.

The Senate

Canada's Upper House is a custom or tradition passed down from British parliamentary democracy. Based on classical conservative notion of tradition and elitism, it was based on the British House of Lords, believing that the 'masses' or the common people in the lower House of Commons needed a check or oversight regarding their proposed legislation. While this notion has changed over time, Canada's Senate remains appointed by the Head of State, the Governor General. Today, the Prime Minister selects citizens to be Senators who are then sworn in by the Governor General. Senators are not re-elected, but rather serve until the age of 75 years.

In theory, because the Senate is not elected, they can provide institutional memory (history) as well as independent criticism of any bills being put forth by the House of Commons. Additionally, they are selected to provide equal representation across all geographic regions in Canada. Due to the great population disparity across the country; this house provides an opportunity to limit tyranny of the majority in the House of Commons.

All legislation from the elected House of Commons must also be debated and passed in the Senate. There are limits to their power thought. While they can strike down or fail to pass a bill (proposed law), they cannot alter any bills that deal with the 'power of the purse' or the people's money. This has to do with the fact that they are not directly accountable to the voters.

Please note the numbers below add up to 24 seats for each 'region' of Canada. This is to balance that 40% of Canada's population reside in Quebec and Ontario.

House of Commons

The House of Commons is considered the Lower Branch of Canada's Parliament.  This is who we elect when there are Federal (national) elections.  To determine our Prime Minister and his/her cabinet ministers, all politicians must be elected to the House of Commons (legislative branch) first.

The political party that wins the most riding elections, which translates directly to seats in the House of Commons, gets to be the governing party. This means their party leader becomes Prime Minister. The Prime Minister then selects his/her cabinet ministers who will run government departments. Each of these ministers must also be elected to the House of Commons. This ensures direct accountability of the executive branch inside the legislative branch.

The same cannot be said in a presidential republican democracy, as the President is voted for separately from the legislative branch, and his/her cabinet are not elected by the people, but chosen by the President. This will be covered later on in the unit.

There are 338 ridings or geographic districts in Canada.  Each riding in Canada is represented by one seat in the House of Commons. As a result, the number of seats on the House of Commons has slowly risen as Canada's population has increased over time. That is because a riding equals roughly 100,000 people in that location. Politicians from different political parties (reflecting ideological diversity) run or campaign to be the representative of that riding.

On election day, individual citizens, based on their own self-interest, vote in a secret ballot for the party that they feel can best represent them. Whom ever receives the most the ballots or votes in each riding, becomes the MP or 'winner' to represent all of the constituents or people that live in that district. Each riding gets one of the 338 seats in the House of Commons.

The winner of each riding is then tallied up or counted, to see which political party won the most seats out of the 338.

As stated previously, Canada's electoral system is based on representation by population.  The MPs or Members of Parliament represent a geographic area or riding in Canada which includes roughly 100,000 people. That way, there is one representative for roughly the same number of people. These MPs are directly accountable to the voters and will be up for election within 5 years of being chosen by the electorate. This map shows you the electoral districts, called 'ridings' in Canada.

What do you notice about the number of ridings across Canada?
Remember, the geographic ridings are created around 100,000 people (approximately).