Canadian Committee System

As time goes on, some countries become more relevant in the global sphere while others start to fade away. Canada is a country that only becomes more relevant as time goes on. Since being granted full sovereignty, Canada has had a growing role as a major world player. Much of their international growth has to do with its close ties to the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the country has also undergone huge change and refocusing on a domestic level. With influence from both Europe and the United States, Canada has a very unique system of governing. This paper will focus on a few major areas of Canada. It will look into the history of Canada, the structure of its government, its politics, and many of the major issues it faces today.

The electoral system in Canada is also known as a “first past the post” system. “First past the post” means the candidate with the highest number of votes wins the congressional seat, whereas the other candidates with a lower number of votes don’t get any representation. There are many cons to this system that will be highlighted throughout this essay. I will argue that the electoral system requires reform due to the discrepancies between the percentage of popular votes and the number of seats won. Canada’s electoral system has many problems and is not seen as fully democratic since it has provided poor representation for both candidates that win and lose. Candidates can win seats with less than 50% of votes, meaning that even if the majority of the nation, or province did not vote for the candidate they still win the election as they consume the highest number of votes among the parties. FPTP allows two people in different ridings to get the same number of votes with the outcome of one winner since the distribution of votes and seats are unequal. The system can also encourage strategic voting such as not voting for whom you think is the best fit but voting for the candidate that seems most likely to win in order to beat candidate you dislike. FPTP leads to an imbalance of power and has the potential for corruption.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has made some controversial decisions in key cases in Canada’s past. When looking at the Canadian Founders intent for Canadian Federalism, many scholars argue that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has done a bad job following the founders’ intentions and intentionally decentralized Canada. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council did fail in keeping in line with what the founders intended for Canada and may have even intentionally set out to decentralize the Canadian government, but this does not mean it had a negative impact on Canada. There are a number of cases that were seen by the JCPC that played a vital role in the decentralization of the Canadian government, yet

Many modern democracies have a bicameral legislature which is a body of government that consist of two legislative chambers. The bicameral legislature provides representation for both, the citizens of the country and the state legislature on a federal level. The Canadian parliament has two chambers, the lower chamber which is an elected House of Commons and the upper chamber which is the non-elected Senate. The Canadian Senate is assumed to be a “sober second thought” [3] on government legislation which is a phrase that describes the Senate’s role in promoting and defending regional interest. There has been an immense amount of the public outcry regarding the Senate after spending scandal that occurred during the recent election period. A question that has induced discussion in parliament is whether the Canadian Senate should be reformed or not? This issue divides the population in half because of differing views. Some political parties want the abolition of the Senate to occur while other parties would like to have an elected Senate because provinces are not represented equally. A method of deciding the faith of the current Senate, the functions of the Senate and objectives of Senate reform should be defined. The assumptions about the purpose of the Senate, problems of the current Senate, the goal of Senate reform and the method of achieving the reform may help provide a consensus on how the Senate should be reformed.

In Canadian government it best to have legislators who do not vote their own interests and they vote the interests of their constituents. If legislators vote in their own interests they could be going against their own parties or the constituents that voted them in. Even if they know a lot about the subject they should still keep their interests out of their decisions and keep the interests of their constituents. Legislators that vote their own interests might even be going against the party policies, which could get them kicked out of the party or disciplined. Legislators are there to represent the people of their riding, not to vote their own interests in.

Canada’s friendly neighbor to the South, the US, has an electoral system that is composed of 3 separate elections, one of them deciding the head of state. The president elected by the people and he or she is the determining person of the country’s political system. In the US runs like a majority system” In Canada, however, elections are held slightly differently. Citizens vote for a Member of Parliament in a 308-seat house and candidates win not by a majority, unlike in the US, but by a plurality. This means that a candidate can actually win by simply having more votes than the other candidates. This method of representative democracy, in general, does not cause too much controversy in a global scope but has

David C. Docherty’s scholarly journal responds to the continual controversy and debate of the usefulness of the Canadian senate in 2002. Docherty’s article does an amazing job at analyzing the current Canadian senate and argues that the senate is a failing Canadian institution because of two democratic deficiencies: the undemocratic nature of senator selection and the inability of senators to represent provinces properly (45). These two features of why the senate is a failing Canadian institution can be compared to how Rand Dyck defines democracy in Canadian Politics: Critical Approaches. Docherty looks at several previous senate reforms and answers the question of why these senate reforms failed, in doing so Docherty lays down a framework for a possible successful senate reform but acknowledges the obstacles. Docherty does a very good job at accessing the problem of the senate, accessing the problem of previous reforms, and suggesting a plausible type of reform for the senate. This provides the reader with the knowledge of why the Canadian senate is a failing institution but also the possible solutions of how the senate can be reformed in order to maximize its democratic potential. Although, Docherty fails to provide an exact reform that needs to be taken, he just draws upon other failures and hypothesis that this may be the right solution for reform. Rand Dyck’s chapter 11 fills in the missing gap of reform that needs to be taken by drawing upon one of the best attempts at

Prior to 1921, men were the only members of the Canadian parliamentary system. With the first Canadian women being elected into the Canadian parliament in 1921, women have had the ability to participate and become elected into the House of Commons. Since then, Canadian women’s participation in the House of Commons has substantially increased from 1 female seat holder in 1921 to the present day 64 seats held by women. Although this increase is seemed as substantial, the debate about the underrepresentation of women in politics has been a central topic of debate by politicians, scholars and the general public in Canada. Although it is widely agreed that representation of women in the House of Commons needs to increase, there are two

This historical study will examine the complex provincial affiliations related to Canadian Confederation that demanded complex political maneuvers to unify the Anti-Confederate party and the Confederate Party to support the Quebec Resolutions of 1865. The Anti-Confederate vantage point of George Etienne Cartier’s Parti Bleus was a primarily French region, which sought its own sovereign country. More so, the Atlantic/Maritime colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia rejected the idea of a Canadian federal government, which was based on the political leadership of William Annand of Nova Scotia and Albert J. Smith of New Brunswick. In contrast, the Confederate leadership of James A. MacDonald in Ontario sought to unify Canada due to the rising

The Canadian Senate has been a long standing problematic section of the Canadian government and since its creation in 1867 and has been scrutinized for its effectiveness and purpose. In recent years, concerns have been raised and approaches have been suggested into reforming the Senate. Those in favour of taking drastic measures to reform or even abolish the Senate agree that the Senate is not functioning and not a trustworthy part of Canadian government. However, there are those who view that the Senate can still be saved say it has a purpose in the Canadian government since it serves a vital function in passing Canadian legislature. Nonetheless, maintaining a government body that is non functional needs to be addressed and revised and gone

For many years, there has been an ongoing debate as to whether or not the Senate should undergo a reform. Many Canadian citizens are unsatisfied with the fact that the Senate is not elected. How are citizens to be sure that they are being properly represented when they are not able to choose who represents them? Although the Senate is an integral part of the governmental system, many Canadians are leaning towards the idea to completely abolish the Senate. The credible, David C. Docherty, outlines the previous attempts for the Senate reform while describing the mindset of Canadians and where the reformation of the Senate currently stands in his article “The Canadian Senate: Chamber of Sober Reflection or Loony Cousin Best Not Talked About.” The previous attempts for the Senate reform while describing the mindset of Canadians and where the reformation of the State currently stands.

Trudeau’s three-phased Senate reforms give minority group leaders an opportunity to represent their communities. The reforms attempt to shift the focus from gaining support for the Liberal party, to a collection of different and diverse minds within the Senate. The first phase of the reforms focused on the “[removal of] all senators from the national Liberal caucus”, which inherently suggested that “senators [no longer] have formal or organic ties with the Liberal caucus, nor do they have any organizational, financial or other formal responsibilities within the Liberal Party” (Dion, 2015, para. 5). Going from there, the “[creation of] a new, nonpartisan, merit-based, broad and diverse process to advise the prime minister on Senate appointments” was the second item on the agenda (Dion, 2015, para. 6). Finally, the third phase targeted the inclusion of marginalized groups, such as women and minorities, in the Senate (Dion, 2015). Therefore, Trudeau’s appointments are changing the direction of the Senate to include historically-oppressed minorities and their representatives.

Reform is a necessary component in aiding a country in advancement, staying with traditions often causes one to lose their belief in their country and to protest against it. For instance, recently many citizens protested against the first-past-the-post system and demanded proportional representation. Therefore, it is an immensely shared outlook that Canada’s electoral system is outdated. There are various whys and wherefores for this, such as the fact that the party with the majority simply wins whilst the votes for other parties are easily thrown out. At times, this means that a party with little support can easily win. To put it in perspective, imagine that Party A has thirty percent of the votes, Party B has twenty-five percent of the votes, Party D has twenty-three percent of the votes, and Party E has twenty-two percent of the votes; in this scenario, Party A will win the election despite having 70% of the population against this decision. In addition to this, the first-past-the-post system does not allow independent candidates and parties to be represented. A proportional representation system will fix both issues by giving the parties seats in proportion to the vote, thus ending the ruling dynasty of the current three majority parties in Canada, and causing all votes to be represented. Furthermore, in the concluding of the elections, a coalition government may

As the 20th century comes to an end, Canada is a transcontinental nation whose interests and representatives span the face of the globe and extend into every sphere of human behaviour. However this was not always the case. When the four colonies of British North America united to create Canada on July 1, 1867, the new country's future was by no means secure. Canada was a small country, with unsettled borders, vast empty spaces, and a large powerful neighbour, the United States. Confronting these challenges was difficult for the young country. Though Canada was independent in domestic matters, Britain retained control over its foreign policy. Over the next fifty or so years, Canada's leaders and its

Voters are not the only people who benefit from the practice of party discipline. The practice is also fundamentally important for the stability of the Canadian government. Being a pluralist country means there are groups (political parties) of differing ideologies that represent