Canada's Federal Government

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Recommended: Canada’s Federal Political System

Canada, like most western countries, uses a democratic approach to forming the federal government. Political parties are elected through voting from the citizens of Canada. Although the idea of voting does not seem like a very difficult task, the forming of Canada’s federal government is very tedious, in which many steps must be taken. In the next few paragraphs I will talk about how Canada’s Federal government is formed, while also putting in a few thoughts of my own with our system. First of all, you have your main political parties, each with a somewhat different ideology. An example would be the New Democratic Party (NDP) who have more of a socialists idea of how Canada should work. During an election campaign, the people of each constituency (population district) vote for the political party that they think bests benefits Canada’s economy, but mostly, what benefits their own economic status and ideological opinion. Important issues like Health Care and the Environment are a good reasons people vote for certain parties as well. Depending on the number of ridings won by each party, a majority or minority party is elected. A majority government is pretty much when a party wins by a margin of at least fifty percent plus one. This happens when, no matter what, other parties cannot out vote them, even if all the other parties add up their votes together, the sum will still be less than the Majority party’s sum of votes. A minority government is when the sum of unelected parties can still out weigh the government party in charge. This also means that if the elected party wanted to pass an act, etc. they would need support from the opposition. When this happens, good luck passing any laws, since parties rarely help one another unless a compromise is made or if it would make their party look better. Winning representatives from each constituency are chosen and can be from any party that won in its constituency. The total representatives then will be the same number as the constituencies, 279 representatives, 279 constituencies. However, that party that is elected as a whole and has the most representatives in the parliament then forms the Cabinet. The Cabinet is made from the representatives of the elected party and is when approximately 30 to 40 ministers are chosen to take the control of a ministry, fisheries, forestry, etc.

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