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2 Executive
Elizabeth II as Queen of Canada is the repository of executive power, which she does not exercise herself. As expressed in the constitution, “the Executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen”. The government acts in her name. The term “ Crown” is usually used to represent the power of the monarchy. Government ministers are ministers of the Crown. Criminal prosecutions are made by Crown prosecutors in the name of the monarch.
Since the monarch does not reside in Canada, she appoints a governor general to represent her and exercise her powers. The person who fills this role is selected on the advice of the prime minister. “Advice” in this sense is a choice without options since it would cause a major political crisis if the prime minister's advice were not followed. This convention protects the monarchy. As long as the monarch is only following the advice of her ministers, she is not held personally responsible for the decisions of the government. The governor general is appointed for a five-year term that may be extended. It has been rumoured that the current Governor-General made it clear that if there were problems with the passage of the 2004 throne speech that she would not make a decision on what to do with Parliament and would instead as the Queen to make the decision.
The prime minister is the person who has the confidence of the House of Commons to lead the government. In practice, the position usually goes to the leader of the strongest political party in the Commons which usually has most of the seats in the lower house and forms a majority government. On several occasions in Canadian history no party has had a majority in the House of Commons and thus one party, usually the largest, forms a minority government. Coalition governments are rare at the provincial level. At the federal level, Canada has only once had a coalition government: the Union Government of Sir Robert Borden during World War I.
Political parties are private organizations that are not mentioned in the constitution. By the convention of responsible government, the prime minister and most of his cabinet are members of Parliament so they can answer to Parliament for their actions. But, constitutionally, any adult Canadian is eligible for the jobs, and prime ministers have held office after being elected leader but before taking a seat in the Commons ( John Turner, for example), or after being defeated in their constituencies. The prime minister selects ministers to head the various government departments and form a cabinet. The members of the Cabinet remain in office at the pleasure of the prime minister. If the Commons passes a motion of no confidence in the government, the prime minister and his cabinet are expected either to resign their offices or to ask for Parliament to be dissolved so that a general election can be held. To avoid non-confidence voting, strong party discipline has long been an established fact of life in the Canadian parliament, in which members of a party, especially members of the ruling party, are strongly urged to always vote the "party line" or face consequences, up to expulsion from the party's caucus.
3 Parliament
Canada's parliament consists of the monarch, an elected House of Commons and an appointed Senate. The prime minister nominates Canadians to the Senate according to a formula that distributes the seats among the provinces. In practice, legislative power rests with the party that has the majority of seats in the House of Commons which is elected from a current 308 constituencies (or electoral districts) for a period not to exceed five years. Canada's highly disciplined political parties and first-past-the-post electoral system have, since the 1970s, usually given one political party control of the Commons. The five-year period has only been extended once, in 1916. The prime minister may ask the governor general to dissolve Parliament and call new elections at virtually any time. That request was refused only once, during the minority government of 1926. For strategic reasons, prime ministers usually call new elections after four years in power.
Since 1867 there have been only three Canada-wide referenda.
4 Provincial governments
Each province is governed by a premier and a single, elected legislative chamber. Provincial governments operate under a parliamentary system similar in nature to that of the federal government, with the premier chosen in the same manner as the Prime Minister of Canada. A lieutenant governor, recommended by the prime minister and then appointed by the governor general, represents the Crown in each province. A lieutenant governor, like the governor general, has real power only in extreme emergencies.
Residuary power – that is, all powers not specified in the constitution – resides with the federal government; the original intent of this provision was to avoid the sectionalism which had recently resulted in the American Civil War. However, in 1895 the imperial Privy Council ruled that the federal government could exercise its residuary power only in wartime. As a result, responsibilities for new functions of government such as labour law or social welfare had to be accommodated under powers specified in the British North America Act. Many ended up being assigned to provincial areas of jurisdiction, so that Canada today is a highly decentralized federation. Further decentralization of functions has been implemented to accommodate provincial aspirations, chiefly those of Quebec, as described below. However, all provinces have the right to assume the powers now exercised only by Quebec, and Alberta and Ontario have expressed interest in doing so.
