Canadian Prime Minister Case Study

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Canadian political scientist Mathew Kerby notes that the Canadian prime minister possess the power to appoint cabinet ministers to his/her liking. Of course, the power to elect the governing body of Canada based on one’s own opinion of what Canada should be is absolutely telling as to just how powerful the position of Prime Minister of Canada is. The Prime Minister should not possess the exclusive power to elect the Federal Cabinet of Canada. Before someone is elected Prime Minister, their political party must name them as the leader of the party. Then all Canadian citizens, who are 18 years or older, are eligible to vote for their Member of Parliament, who sits in the House of Commons and debates Canadian issues. The Political Party with the most MP’s is then the governing party of Canada, …show more content…

That way the Cabinet would have a higher probability to achieve what Canadian citizens want it to. But with this solution, comes a comparable problem: time. There are currently 26 members of Cabinet. Excluding the Prime Minister and Leader of Government, there are 24 ministers. Including the time it would take for federal campaigning and ballot counts alone; assuming that members of Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic, Green, Bloc Quebecois and Independents all had MP’s campaigning for each position; Canadian citizens would have to decide on 24 positions from a possible 144 MP’s. Furthermore, how are we, as Canadian citizens, qualified to select a minister of Finance. Why don’t we just elect someone to do it for us? Someone who we deem qualified to make the decisions so that we don’t have to. We do that already. Perhaps the Prime Minister’s power is not excessive. And that how the Prime Minister’s power is democratic due to the fact that we vote in the political party to give the Prime Minister their

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