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[[Canada]] is a federal parliamentary democracy within a constitutional monarchy. The head of state is the
A side effect of this system is a close similarity to the political systems of [[British Political System|Britain]], [[Irish Political System|Ireland]], [[Australian Politics|Australia]], and [[Indian Political System|India]].
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== Federal Politics ==
What most people think of as "Canadian federal government" consists of the House of Commons, the Senate, the Governor General, the Supreme Court and other lesser courts, and the usual assortment of bureaucrats, soldiers, and the like.
* The House of Commons has 338 members, all elected to represent districts known as "ridings"<ref>From the Old Norse term "þriðing", used when they occupied Yorkshire.</ref> for a variable term constitutionally not to exceed five years - in practice, it's legislated at four for a majority government and usually two for a minority. There is no limit on how often a Member of Parliament may be re-elected. The size of this body varies, and in practice increases size every 10 years after each census. The majority of the Cabinet is drawn from the Members of Parliament, usually from the members of the party with the most seats. Members of Parliament who are not members of the party in power are known as the [[wikipedia:Loyal opposition|Loyal Opposition]] - they're loyal to the State but not to the Government.
* The [http://sen.parl.gc.ca/portal/home-e.htm Senate] has 105 members, all appointed (though in one case the appointed Senator was chosen in a special election by the province he represents) and serving until age 75.
* The [http://www.gg.ca/ Governor General], currently
** An event in which the GG can become useful is when the Prime Minister starts to show signs of getting dictatorial; at which point, the Governor General (as the Commander-in-Chief) can order the army to forcibly depose the PM.
*** This is taken directly from the Westminster System used by the British Parliament and Monarchy, that serves as the basis for ''all'' Commonwealth Countries. Basically, they're ''meant'' to keep each other in line.
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* The [http://www.scc-csc.ca/ Supreme Court] consists of nine justices, appointed for unfixed terms, though required to retire at age 75. Three are from Quebec, six are from the rest of Canada, because Quebec law is structured differently than [[The Common Law|the English-derived systems]]. By convention, three of the other six are from Ontario, two from the West, and one from the Atlantic provinces.
[[Prime Ministers of Canada|The Prime Minister]] is the Head of Government, similar to a Senate Majority Leader or Speaker of the House in American Politics (because of the Westminster-style parliament, Canada's executive branch is purely ceremonial, so the usual executive powers is devolved to the Prime Minister). In the parliamentary system, Canadians do not vote for the Prime Minister directly; instead, they vote only for their Member of Parliament in their riding. The party with the most seats in the House of Commons forms a majority government (when they control more than half the seats) or a minority government (when they control less than half, but still more than any other party), and the Prime Minister is then appointed by the party itself <ref>Theoretically, in any situation where there is a minority government, some of the other parties could get together and form a coalition government, but this has not happened since confederation; the one time it seemed like this might happen -- in 2008 -- it was kiboshed by the ruling Tories' clever exploitation of [[Eagleland Osmosis]] and general distrust of the Bloc Quebecois.</ref>. In practice, Canadians know what leader a party will follow during the election cycle, by (unbroken) convention, it is the party leader. In the (remarkably likely) event that the Prime Minister loses his riding, a junior member of the party will typically resign his seat to give to the PM, as the PM must have a seat to serve in Parliament. This happened as early as the 1870s, after John A. Macdonald's government collapsed over the CPR scandal and he lost his own seat in Kingston. From 1878 to 1882, he represented the riding of Victoria in British Columbia, since he couldn't get elected in his home province of Ontario.
Federal responsibilities include <s>external</s> <s>foreign</s> global affairs, defense, justice, agriculture, <s>Indian</s> <s>Native</s> <s>Indigenous</s> First Nations affairs, administration of the territories (to some extent), governing interactions between the provinces, and providing "equalization", essentially welfare payments to poorer provinces. They also oversee a pile of agencies, such as Canada Post, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the [[CBC|Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]].
Canada does not have a term analogous to the American "inside the Beltway", mainly because Canadians tend not to care enough about political minutiae to give a name to the arcane goings-on of Parliament and senior bureaucracy.
== Provincial Politics ==
Canada is divided into ten provinces - from east to west: Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island ("PEI"), New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia ("BC") - and three territories - Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ("NWT"), and
Provincial responsibilities include transportation, health, education, and administration of justice. Also, in practice, whining about unfair treatment from the federal government is a major responsibility of Premiers. (The Prime Minister of the day occasionally responds by complaining about all that whining.)
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== Municipal Politics ==
Municipal politics are pretty much the same all over: the people of each city elect a mayor and around some number (ranging from a handful in small towns to 44 in [[Toronto]]) councilors depending on population. <!-- While party politics tend to be absent of smaller towns, bigger cities tend to have parties, though they are generally unrelated to the provincial and federal parties. CITATION NEEDED --> Party politics is legally completely absent in municipal politics in Ontario
Municipal governments are responsible for things like utilities, zoning, and making sure developments go through the proper channels.
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* A different variation of the normal election cycle occurred in 2008, when the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois drew up a formal agreement to topple the PM and the ruling Conservatives in a no-confidence vote (Canada was in a minority government -- i.e. Liberals, NDP and Bloc together outnumbered the Conservatives), then request that the Governor General install them as a majority coalition government, all without triggering a general election. While such an act is perfectly legit in a parliamentary democracy, the Conservatives launched a media blitz (banking on the correct assumption that [[Viewers are Morons|many Canadians do not know how their government actually works]]) characterizing the act as a "coup d'etat" and killing the idea when the Liberals backed down. The fact that the Liberals had just had substantial losses in the preceding election, but would be leading the coalition nonetheless, also made the idea troubling to some Canadians, as did the fact that the coalition would require the support of the Bloc, a separatist party.
Since English and French are both official languages, any federal government service may be received in either language. It practice, it's typically more complicated than that. Suffice to say that French service is easily available only in Quebec, most of New Brunswick, Winnipeg,
Like other Parliaments, the federal and provincial governments are lead by the leader of the party with the most members in the chamber - the Prime Minister and the Premiers, respectively. Unlike other Parliaments, the leader of the party is not chosen by the caucus; instead, each party has a "leadership race" to select its leader. A leadership race is like the Primaries in US politics in that only members of the party are allowed to vote, but that's pretty much the only similarity. (And one can "stuff the ballot box" by signing up new party members after the leadership race has begun! In the late-2010s, almost all of the federal and provincial parties use "one member, one vote" to elect their leaders, but a very few still have riding members send delegates to a convention.) Leadership races can be held at any time, for any reason, although they're usually only held if the current party leader resigns or dies. If the federal party in power holds a leadership race, the winner ''automatically gets to be the Prime Minister''... at least until the next election, and assuming he or she has a seat in Parliament.
== Parties ==
''A
In federal politics, the three major parties are the moderate/right-wing Conservatives ("Tories" - blue on the maps), the moderate Liberals ("Grits" - red on the maps), and the leftist/social democratic New Democratic Party ("NDP" - orange on the maps). Historically, the Liberals and Conservatives have been the two major parties and the only ones to govern, although both have suffered periods of electoral collapse (the Conservatives from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s; the Liberals
Other parties have also had a major impact in the past. The Reform Party (later the Canadian Alliance), a conservative party with support in the western provinces, did well from 1993-2000 before merging with the Progressive Conservatives to form the current Conservative Party. A similar phenomenon happened in the 1960s-1980s with the Social Credit Party and the NDP, and the 1920s-1930s with the Progressive Party merging with the Conservative Party (of the time). The Bloc Quebecois, a Quebec separatist party with a leftist/social democratic orientation, was the dominant party in Quebec and a significant force in Parliament from 1993-2011, but lost its party status and all but four seats in the 2011 election.
▲A thing of note for American readers: the Canadian political centre (as used to described parties here) is to the left of [[American Political System|the American center]]. Canadian conservatives might be right-leaning "Blue Dog Democrats" or moderate "Rockefeller Republicans" in the USA, while the Liberals' politics are closer to those of the left wing of the Democrats (e.g. Nancy Pelosi). The NDP are to the left of anything mainstream in the USA -- a few prominent names on the American version of the "extreme left", such as Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich, would probably be considered moderate progressives within the NDP.
The Liberal Party has had a truly remarkable run in Canadian politics -- in the last century, the Liberals have spent more time governing Canada than the Communists have governing Russia, they were in charge for 80 of 110 years between 1896 and 2006, and they won every seat in the Maritimes to cement their 2015 election victory; small wonder that the Liberals are sometimes referred to as "[[Nothing Can Stop Us Now|Canada's natural governing party]]". It doesn't hurt that the Liberals have [[Magnificent Bastard|frequently stolen the most popular ideas from the platforms of the various third parties and then taken credit for them]], such as the post-war welfare state originally proposed by the NDP or the drastic spending cuts of the 1990s advocated by the Reform Party. These policies were implemented by Liberal governments, but the third parties played no small part in getting the ball rolling for them.
The 2011 election [[Wham! Episode|saw a historic shake-up in Canadian politics]]. The NDP, largely by gaining major support in Quebec -- where they had never before been a contender -- gained a third of the seats in Parliament and [[Didn't See That Coming|became the Official Opposition for the first time in their history]]. This development was also responsible for the demise of the Bloc Quebecois, who fell from dominance in Quebec to [[Vestigial Empire|only four seats]], [[Humiliation Conga|not enough to qualify them as an official party]]. The Liberals, for the first time in ''their'' history, [[My Greatest Failure|fell to third-party status]]. The Conservatives, for [[Back
The NDP's fortunes [[Status Quo Is God|returned to their usual third-party status]] and the Liberals (lead by the highly charismatic Justin Trudeau) returned to power in the 2015 election, leading many to think that the NDP's success in the 2011 election was actually Jack Layton's success. The Conservatives are the Official Opposition, with a few "independents" (who are actually members of parties that didn't get enough members elected to meet the threshold for official party status - some Bloc Quebecois members and Green Party leader Elizabeth May) rounding out the House of Commons.
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Provincial politics tends to also have the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP as the primary parties, though there are exceptions -- the Conservative Party of Saskatchewan imploded in corruption scandals and was replaced by the Saskatchewan Party, the BC Liberal Party is in practice a merger between the Liberals and Conservatives, the second-to-most recent provincial election in Alberta saw the rise of the ultra-conservative Wildrose party, and Quebec politics is [[Mind Screw|just plain weird]]<ref>It features the ''Parti Québécois'' (PQ), the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), and the newly-formed ''Coalition Avenir Québec'' ([[Fun with Acronyms|CAQ]]). The first is the separatist party, and is slightly left-leaning. The second is federalist, and slightly right-leaning. The third is vaguely described as either centre-right (according to the media) or [[Blue and Orange Morality|neither of the right or left]] (according to their own leadership). The relatively-new CAQ claims to eschew the entire federalism-separatism debate, and has lately been poaching voter support and MNAs from the Liberals, the PQ, and the defunct ADQ. One thing to note: Quebec is somewhat to the left of Canada in general, notably on social issues, and as such, the Quebec Liberal Party is very similar to the Federal Conservative Party; indeed, a past Liberal Premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, rose to prominence as a Progressive Conservative minister under Bryan Mulroney -- and even became the leader of the party after the 1992 wipeout -- before becoming leader of the Quebec Liberals.</ref>. The NDP does frequently win in provincial elections, especially in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and BC. Alberta is also an interesting case -- having been a province since 1905, they have experienced only three changes of government, one during the Depression, one after popular premier Ernest Manning (father of Reform Party founder Preston Manning) resigned and whose successor had nary a fraction of his political skills, and one after the most recent election when the NDP managed an upset victory. From 1971 to 2015, a string of Conservative leaders [[Curb Stomp Battle|won a majority in every election]], to the point where Alberta was routinely considered a one-party state, and it's [[Serious Business|only half a joke]].
The result of the above is that although parties can have the same name at federal and provincial levels, often that
Municipal politics tends to be officially non-partisan, except in BC and Québec. However, individual councilors and mayors are often known to have particular partisan leanings -- for example, Jack Layton, previous leader of the federal NDP, was a member of [[Toronto]] City Council before he won the leadership, and Toronto's current (as of 2019) mayor John Tory used to lead the Ontario Progressive Conservative party (from outside the legislature; he lost his election bid in 2007).<ref>That doesn't mean the Conservative Mayor of Toronto and the Conservative Premier of Ontario get along - far from it. Political leanings at the municipal level rarely mean much in Canada.</ref>
== Politicians ==
One significant difference when it comes to individual politicians compared to the United States is that there is no equivalent in Canadian constitutional law to the "natural born citizen" requirement, and in general Parliament (and some of the provincial legislatures) will have a higher number of naturalized immigrants than jurisdictions in the United States.
Of note is the fact that a practicing Muslim, Naheed Nenshi, was elected Mayor of Calgary in October 2010, a first in Canadian cities and only the second in North America (after Mohammed Hameeduddin of Teaneck, New Jersey). This is of particular significance as Calgary is located in southern Alberta, which is generally considered to be one of the most conservative parts of Canada.
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'''''Again, as of when ATT forked from TVTropes - things have changed substantially since then. Of special note is what happened with regard to particular Senators from 2014 to 2016.'''''
What, [[Beware the Nice Ones|you think Canadians are polite and honest all the time?]] John A. Macdonald was accused of taking bribes back in 1873 in relation to the funding of the Canadian Pacific Railway. [[Wikipedia:List of political scandals in Canada|Even Wikipedia has a list of Canadian political scandals.]]
Two of the
Sex scandals are rarer than in the States. Arguably this is not because Canadian politicians are better behaved in this respect, but because before the #MeToo movement of 2017 the Canadian media
Two more recent cases of what could be described as sex-scandals have happened
One can't forget another recent scandal to flag the Conservatives. In February 2010, Conservative cabinet minister (for the status of women!) Helena Guergis was accused of throwing a hissy fit at the Charlottetown airport, located in Canada's smallest province, PEI. The minister allegedly threw shoes across the security screening area and banged on a security door. When media and the Liberals asked for the security tapes, CATSA (the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority) could not provide them (many suspect [[Executive Meddling|Conservative meddling]]).
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The opposition NDP and Liberals have [[Status Quo Is God|(rather predictably) reacted with outrage,]] while the Conservatives have [[I Was Never Here|naturally denied any responsibility]], though a low-ranking Conservative staffer from the Guelph campaign has since resigned from his position at the office of a Toronto-area MP. Spin-off allegations have included voter registration fraud as well as illegal campaign financing. Federal opinion polls have registered minimal (if any) impact as a result of the "robocall scandal", but it remains to be seen whether [[Serious Business|actual charges may be laid]] and if they will have an effect.
Update note: Charges were laid in one riding, and the person charged was brought to court and convicted.
Possible next scandal: Rob Ford's behaviour while mayor of Toronto, which made international headlines at the time. [[Wikipedia:Timeline of Rob Ford video scandal]]
Next scandal: Some members of the Senate were reported to be charging expenses for things they shouldn't have been. One, Mike Duffy, paid back the money - but it later came out that the money came from someone in the Prime Minister's Office. Duffy ended up being charged with taking a bribe, while the PMO staffer walked away scot-free. Public outrage ensued; the popular view was that said staffer was a [[Karma Houdini]]. The government fell in the next election
"Scandal"-2017: Chrystia Freeland (Foreign Affairs Minister) and her [[Nazi Grandpa]] (in the most biting form, presented as "Canada's Femi-Nazi Problem"). Not because of grandpa's existence, but her repeated attempts to whitewash him (a high-ranked volunteer Nazi propagandist who among the other things urged all patriotic Ukrainian nationalists to enlist in the Galizia Division of Waffen SS - which is far more unpalatable than "[[I Did What I Had to Do]]" or "weaker evil is [[Lesser of Two Evils|lesser]]" of most collaborators, and links the issue with celebrating Waffen SS in Canada and Baltic countries) into "a victim too", and combination of this background with job that involves meddling with Ukraine... and Latvia (with its Waffen SS commemoration parades). As several journalists noted, her answers deny or deflect even well-documented parts of the issue, which isn't reassuring at all, thus the press split between "La La La, I can't hear you" and "Ouch, ''that'' only gets more disturbing". While [http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/chrystia-freelands-granddad-was-indeed-a-nazi-collaborator-so-much-for-russian-disinformation the facts are not disputed], this quickly blew over; this has the status of being an attempt at a "manufactured scandal" which was quickly forgotten. Chrystia Freeland became Deputy Prime Minister after the next election. It appears Canadians think the [[Sins of Our Fathers]] trope should be averted in Canadian Politics.
▲ Next scandal: Some members of the Senate were reported to be charging expenses for things they shouldn't have been. One, Mike Duffy, paid back the money - but it later came out that the money came from someone in the Prime Minister's Office. Duffy ended up being charged with taking a bribe, while the PMO staffer walked away. Public outrage ensued. The government fell in the next election, and Duffy was acquitted.
== Important Phrases in Canadian Politics ==
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A description of Quebec found in the Meech Lake Accord (see below). The phrase was never clearly defined but still became a polarizing term, dividing Canadians between federalists and regional-nationalists (or separatists).
===
{{quote|Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.|Pierre Trudeau, addressing the Washington Press Club in March 1969, discussing Canada-US relations}}
The analogy shows how vulnerable Canada is to actions taken by or within the USA, and how oblivious the USA is to this state of affairs.
This reality,
=== Just watch me ===
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Another quote from (then-Prime Minister) Pierre Trudeau, said in an impromptu interview during the [[wikipedia:October Crisis|October Crisis]] in 1970. [http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/civil-unrest/the-october-crisis-civil-liberties-suspended/just-watch-me.html Here's the exchange.] Three days after the exchange, Trudeau declared martial law.
The phrase has [[wikipedia:Just watch me|its own page on The Other Wiki]]. It’s [[Memetic Mutation|become shorthand]] for how a freedom-loving, peaceful Canadian government can take drastic and effective measures to combat terrorism - and taking those measures just once in 1970 prevented a resurgence of terrorism in Canada for decades, until after 9/11.
=== Meech Lake Accord ===
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=== Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary ===
A truly Canadian "solution" offered by then-Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to the divisive matter of conscription during [[
It also lead to poet FR Scott saying Mackenzie King [[Take That|"[did] nothing by halves / Which [could] be done by quarters."]]
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[[Category:Useful Notes/Canada]]
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