Case Study Guide

In his article Marsh (2010) suggests that the Australian political system could benefit from new infrastructure by replacing senate with committees of

Last year, our new government was formed. We agreed to what the Articles had said. It seems that now we are having issues with what we had once agreed with. In this newsletter, I will only address four of the most problematic things in the Articles of Confederation. However there are many more that will not be brought to light today.

The Senate plays a key role in tandem with the House of Commons, in the operation of Canada’s government, some people think that the Senate should be abolished; however without the Senate, “The right to bear arms” could become true for Canada. The Senate should be reformed; abolishing or keeping the Senate at its current state would be unjust. The current Senate is not elected, effective, nor equal.

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.

The issue of electoral reform has become more important than ever in Canada in recent years as the general public has come to realize that our current first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system, formally known as single-member plurality (SMP) has produced majority governments of questionable legitimacy. Of the major democracies in the world, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom are the only countries that still have SMP systems in place. Interestingly enough, there has been enormous political tension and division in the last few years in these countries, culminating with the election results in Canada and the USA this year that polarized both countries. In the last year we have seen

No matter which angle one looks at this from, the effective existence of the Senate is necessary to stabilize the government, as it is near to impossible to have an ideal House of Commons, as confirmed by an English political journalist Walter Bagehot.

In this section, I will briefly discuss the effects of Trudeau’s Senate reforms and argue that reform is better than abolishment.

In other words the senate can change the rules of the functions and procedures that go on in the senate. A good example of such rule changes occurred in 2013 when the democrat controlled senate voted to change the rule required to end a Filibuster; Instead of there being a 3/5 closure vote a the rule that now exists is only a majority vote, aka 51 or grater votes. This dramatically benefited in the passing of laws during the Obama Presidency, but as of the writing of this paper has since backfired on them as the senate is now controlled by a majority republican party, thus rendering the Filibuster completely

Today, Ontario and Quebec have maintained their 24 member senatorial status. The four Western provinces have 6 members each. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both have 10 seats. Prince Edward Island was given 4 out of the original 24 Maritime senators. Together, Newfoundland and Labrador have a total of 6 members. Finally, Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories stand in the equation with 1 senator apiece. Along with the Senate`s original intentions, the principle of equality between the provinces is evidently lost. The Senate primarily fails because it was formerly created to balance out the representation by population which lies in the House of Commons however currently only seems to reinforce it. In fact, Canada’s central provinces, Ontario and Quebec, account for 60 percent of the seats in the House of Commons and almost half of the seats in the Senate at 46 percent.5 The inadequacy of regional representation is emphasized as the Canada West Foundation clearly states: “Canada is the only democratic federal system in the world in which the regions with the largest populations dominate both houses of the national legislature.“6 With an unelected Senate that no longer fulfills its role of equal regional representation and a House of Commons grounded on the representation of provinces proportional to their population, the legitimacy of Parliament has become a

The consequences of the senate not being able to reform have been western provinces feeling like they are left out in the process of decision-making, policy making and other legislative decisions made by the federal government. “The senate was envisioned as a legislative body that would serve several functions in addition to legislation”(Lawlor, Crandol,2013). The senate is refereed as the sober second thought in terms of legislation review but the second thought is rarely concerning the western provinces. Western alienation is caused by regional misrepresentation which is mainly caused by the senate. According to Lawlor, some provincial governments have challenged the unilateral approach by the senate to restructure itself. However the Supreme Court Of Canada will consider a reference case on the constitutional status of senate reform in November 2013. This means that the senate may be reformed this year, the western provinces would prefer a senate that can represent their interests. The senate may need a reform in order to remove the discrimination of the west but in order to do this, it must reform the whole committee that the senate works with.

For more than 130 years, Canada’s FPTP voting system has been a source of discussion and debates, however, it remain all the same with no changes. In this section we will discuss few suggested reforms and referendums on the Canadian electoral system that took place over the past decades until most recently in 2015. We aim from that section to understand what might be the reasons for not considering any changes on the electoral system in Canada. For example in the 1920s, the emergence of a third party known by the Progressive Party helped to ignite the discussion about the possibility of changing the federal electoral system in Canada. However, the submitted proposals to switch to a ‘majority electoral system’ like the Alternative Vote system (which requires at least 50 per cent of the votes to win a seat) were unsuccessful.

The British parliamentary system is a democratic model of governing that Canada adopted as their own. Parliament works harmoniously in three parts: the monarch, the House of Commons and the Senate. Parliament has two chambers: the Senate and the House of Commons. Both chambers must review and refine any bill that has been proposed in Parliament before it officially becomes a law. The Senate is composed of 105 Senators who are appointed to Parliament by the Governor General on the Prime Ministers recommendation from various regions of Canada. Members in the House of Commons are elected from 338 ridings, which are determined by the populace (Government of Canada, 2016). Parliament’s role in governing is to hold responsibility for passing legislations and the choosing of government referring to, the political party with the largest amount of seats. Depending on the results of the election, Canada has the potential of having either a majority, minority or in the rare cases, a coalition government. Generally, voters must select one of the candidates of the two most prosperous parties in order to create a stable parliamentary majority government. The party with more than half of the total seats forms a majority and secures control over the House of Commons. Elections are regulated to be held on the third Monday of October, at least every four years. In 2015 Prime Minister Harper called for an early election under the assumption the Conservative party would win. Harper had to

Under a minority government, no one party dominates policymaking and legislative processes like a single-party majority. In the Canadian parliamentary system, the principle of responsible government requires the political executive to respond to criticism in the legislature (Thomas, 2007). In a complexity of potential cooperative agreements between opposition parties, the governing party can maintain confidence. For example, in countries including Canada, contract parliamentarism, where opposition parties agree to support the government in return for policy on other concessions, is used (Akash et al., 2010, p. 216) . Parties are still able to retain discretion to decide their own position on most matters. Therefore, parties work together in order to secure minority agreements that often survive a full parliamentary term (Akash et al., p. 216). The minority government must accept responsibility for actions taken by them to retain the “confidence”

Stephen Harper's government believed he could exploit the financial advantage that was unavailable to his opposition by calling an early election in order to increase the possibility of winning as many single member districts as possible and in turn, the federal election. However, because of other factors such as his own policies (Syrian refugee crisis and his policy on the Niqab), he appeared to have made some politically incorrect choices, which therefore ended the Conservative government’s ruling of Canada. Had the Canadian government employed Proportional Representation instead of the First Past The Post system, then the Conservatives would have still had more in the current affairs of Canada, except for simply being the opposition. By carrying out various research, it has become apparent that the structure of the Canadian parliamentary system certainly has its advantages, however at the same time it is not the structure and

A constitution revolves around public power. It is the body of law that creates and regulates the application of the powers . The nature and application of these powers are the one of the most fundamental components of an evolved society. NZ has a number of unique and defining characteristics to its constitution, the origins of these powers and their application have far reaching consequences for the people of New Zealand. Perhaps the most principled featured of our legal system is the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. There are a number of constitutional characteristics that heavily influence the scope of parliamentary power in New Zealand. Most notably