History UsefulNotes / CanadianPolitics

* The '''House of Commons of Canada''' has 338 members, all elected to represent districts known as “ridings” for a variable term not to exceed five years, with no limits on how many times they may be re-elected. In practice, this is typically four years (maximum, by law) for a majority government and usually less than two years for a minority government or "hung" parliament. Since the Canadian government is much more centralized (in certain areas) compared to their American counterparts, the House of Commons is responsible for passing laws relating to the postal service, the census, [[UsefulNotes/CanucksWithChinooks the military]], navigation and shipping, fishing, currency, banking, weights and measures, criminal law, bankruptcy, copyrights, patents, First Nations, and naturalization. Only education, provincial officers, municipal governments, charitable institutions, and a few other strictly local or private avenues are at the jurisdiction of the local and provincial legislatures. (Of course, "private avenues" includes most of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_law private law]] in Canada, which as any lawyer will tell you forms the bulk of actual law in any country.)

Canada's is a Westminster parliamentary democracy, derived from the [[UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem]]. As a side effect its political system is also similar to those of [[UsefulNotes/IrishPoliticalSystem Ireland]], UsefulNotes/{{Australia|nPolitics}}, and {{UsefulNotes/India}}.

A side effect of this system is a close similarity to the political systems of [[UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem Britain]], [[UsefulNotes/IrishPoliticalSystem Ireland]], UsefulNotes/{{Australia|nPolitics}}, and {{UsefulNotes/India}}.

* The '''Canadian Senate''' has 105 members, all appointed and serving until a mandatory retirement age of 75 (established under a 1965 law prior to which senators served for life). In one case, the appointed senator was chosen in a special election by the province he represents.[[note]]He represents Alberta and joined the Red Chamber on the prime-ministerial watch of Stephen Harper, befitting the call for an elected upper chamber his old party regularly sounded.[[/note]] The Senate has generally rubber-stamped legislation from the House of Commons for decades and may not introduce financial legislation. Officially, the Senate is the place for “sober second thought”, where the mobbish tendencies of democracy can be curbed and where legislation can be considered away from public pressure. The Senate can suggest changes to the bills or delay a bill until it expires on the table, but it has almost never defeated one outright.

* The '''Governor General of Canada''', who has been Mary Simon since July 2021 (filling the position full-time after Richard Wagner, chief justice of the Supreme Court, served as Administrator from January to July that year after Julie Payette resigned as GG), is the representative of the Sovereign and has a mammoth assortment of powers ranging from the ability to dissolve Parliament, appoint senators, Supreme Court justices, all high-ranking bureaucrats, and the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The Governor General is also Commander-in-Chief of the [[UsefulNotes/CanucksWithChinooks Canadian military]]. However, these powers are bound by a large amount of unwritten convention, and are almost never used except on instruction from the Prime Minister -- the last time they were, in 1926, the resulting “King-Byng Affair” resulted in a massive public outcry that ended in the re-election of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, whom Governor General Lord Byng had rejected.[[note]]Mackenzie King was Prime Minister despite the fact that his Liberal Party didn't even have the most seats in the House of Commons. When he tried to ask Lord Byng to dissolve Parliament after it voted against his government and call an election, he refused and appointed Conservative leader Arthur Meighen as PM instead. Meighen fared no better, so an election was called, which Mackenzie King handily won.[[/note]] The Governor General is, in theory, supposed to be chosen by the Sovereign from a list of candidates suggested by the Prime Minister. For some time now, the Prime Minister’s list of Governor General appointees has been exactly one name long.

Nova Scotia technically has no cities at all, with all municipal governance taking place purely at the regional municipality level -- even the province's major communities, such as Halifax, Dartmouth, Sydney and Antigonish, are not actual towns or cities in their own right, but simply "urban service areas" governed entirely by the regional council. Elsewhere, some but not all of the major cities (e.g., UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} and Ottawa) are also not part of a county structure, but function like "consolidated city-county" or "independent city" governments in the United States.

Provincial politics tends to have the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP as the primary parties as well, though there are exceptions: both Saskatchewan's Saskatchewan Party and B.C.'s BC United Party[[note]]Formerly the B.C. Liberal Party; there is a B.C. Conservative Party, though it's a shadow of cousin parties elsewhere in the country.[[/note]] are in practice mergers of provincial Liberals and Conservatives in opposition to both provinces' powerful NDP, Alberta conservatives saw a decade of division between the more conservative Wildrose Party and the old Progressive Conservatives before they reunited in 2017, and Quebec politics is just plain weird because it includes a secessionist-federalist spectrum in addition to the typical left-right and authoritarian-libertarian spectrums.[[note]]It features the slightly left-leaning, separatist Parti Québécois (PQ), the slightly right-leaning, federalist Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), the centre-right, autonomist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), and the openly socialist and separatist Québec Solidaire. In practice, however, the provincial parties in Quebec all have moderate and extreme factions, united more by their position on the sovereignty question than anything else. The 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, former Quebec premier Jean Charest rose to prominence as a Cabinet minister in the 1980s Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, and even became the party's leader after the 1993 wipeout, before becoming leader of the Quebec Liberals.[[/note]] The NDP does frequently win in provincial elections, especially in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia where, for historical reasons, they're the only major left-wing party in a two-party system and thus viable contenders for government by default.

Alberta is also an interesting case. Since ratifying Confederation in 1905, its government has changed only four times: one during the Depression, one after popular premier Ernest Manning (father of Reform Party founder Preston Manning) resigned and was succeeded by the much less able Harry Strom, and the latest being because of falling oil prices that resulted in an increasingly unpopular NDP majority government's replacement with a Conservative one (led, incidentally, by Jason Kenney, a former federal minister in the Harper government). From 1971 to 2015, a string of PC leaders won a majority in every election, to the point where Alberta was routinely considered a one-party state, and it was only half a joke.[[note]]Until the NDP lost government in 2019, Alberta had never gone back to a party after voting it out of power and the Conservative Party had the longest string of elections, the only comparable run being the 1935–71 Social Creditors, whom the [=PCs=] had themselves eliminated. This trend is also technically guaranteed in the future now since the [=PCs=] and Wildrose have merged into the "new" United Conservative Party.[[/note]]

The result of the above is that although parties can have the same name at federal and provincial levels, often that’s ''all'' they have in common. The NDP is an exception, in that all provincial [=NDPs=] are branches of the federal NDP, while most of the provincial Liberals (Liberals in the Atlantic provinces being an exception) and Conservatives are independent of their federal counterparts. Canadians are usually well aware of this, so nobody blinks when, say, a former NDP premier of Ontario like Bob Rae can make a serious run at leadership of the federal Liberal Party (and indeed be interim leader), former federal Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest can become the Liberal premier of Québec, or the former NDP premier of British Columbia Ujjal Dosanjh can also switch parties to become a federal Liberal cabinet minister.

Municipal politics tends to be officially nonpartisan, except in British Columbia and in Montreal, Quebec. However, individual councillors and mayors are often known to have particular partisan and/or ideological leanings -- for example, Jack Layton was a member of the Toronto City Council before he won the leadership of the federal NDP, and the former mayor of Toronto, John Tory, once led the Ontario PC Party and worked for the federal [=PCs=] before they collapsed.

A lesser-known national unity issue is so-called "Western alienation", the notion held by some in the western provinces that they have been alienated (and in extreme cases excluded) from mainstream political affairs in favour of Ontario and Quebec. This has fueled separatist movements in the west in general and Alberta in particular, with that province currently having ''two'' active (though small) separatist parties. That said, western separatist sentiment has yet to reach the critical mass that it has in Quebec.

The environment has also become a hot topic of late. The Green Party has put environmental regulations at the center of their platforms, the NDP and Liberals also support reforms, and the Conservatives are more cautious, but still interested in, at minimum, seeming like they care. The Harper Conservatives’ environmental platform in government was largely to follow the United States' lead, and because the U.S. didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, Canada didn't either. In fact, under Harper's government, no provinces save Québec reached their targets under the Kyoto Protocol and a few even increased their greenhouse gas emissions since the PM simply refused to follow the Protocol's targets. It remains to be seen what the more explicitly pro-environment Liberal government will do on that file. In the meantime, the provinces are generally content to sit and bitch at each other about who gets what money. This has been described as “exactly like UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, just with more land”.

* The Liberal Party, having earned strong poll ratings for its handling of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, were hoping to return to majority government status. However, Justin Trudeau's (MP for Papineau) calling an election for that September 20 nearly backfired disastrously, as the Conservative Party raced into a huge lead early in the campaign, due to backlash over the government's handling of its [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror withdrawal from Afghanistan]], as well was what was seen by some as Trudeau's hubris for calling the election in the first place. Despite this, the party slowly clawed back in the polls over the course of the campaign, with some help from Conservative gaffes. In the end they gained a handful of seats despite still being behind in the popular vote (albeit by less than in 2019), leaving Trudeau still in charge of a relatively comfortable minority government [[HereWeGoAgain eerily similar to the one he had dissolved]]. Then in early 2022, the NDP and Liberals announced they had negotiated a supply-and-confidence agreement, where the NDP would support the Liberal Party on any votes on [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin supply or confidence]][[labelnote:*]]Essentially, the budget or any vote of confidence or non-confidence, the loss of either could bring down the government and trigger another election[[/labelnote]] until the next scheduled election in 2025, and the Liberals would promise to implement certain key NDP policies, a national dental plan in particular. This benefited both parties, in that the Liberals can govern until 2025 without worrying about the opposition parties threatening to bring down the government and the NDP can see progress on their own concerns and policies, while also giving themselves more time to raise money for the next election (The NDP still had some debts left over from the 2019 election when Parliament was dissolved in 2021). The Conservatives naturally cried foul, and likened the deal to a socialist coup d'état (that the Liberals committed [[FridgeLogic against themselves]]) which Canadians didn't vote for, even if a majority of Canadians did vote for either the Liberals or NDP, bringing back the arguments Stephen Harper used to discredit the 2008 Liberal–NDP–Bloc coalition agreement. Most Canadians were just relieved they didn't have to go through another election anytime soon.
* The Conservatives, barely a year after the election of Erin O'Toole (MP for Durham) as leader, seemed ill-prepared for an election, but nonetheless got off to a strong start in the campaign, leaving it suddenly looking possible that O'Toole might steer the party to an improbable victory. However, various factors -- including vote-splitting caused by a stronger-than-expected performance from the People's Party, flip-flopping on gun control, a manifesto that was accused of being virtually indistinguishable from that of the Liberals, and Jason Kenney's provincial Conservative government in Alberta coming under fire for its diffident handling of a new COVID wave -- eroded their poll lead and led to a performance virtually identical to that of 2019, actually leaving them slightly further behind the Liberals than they already were in terms of seats in parliament. O'Toole was ousted by the parliamentary caucus the following February, leaving the party under the interim leadership of Candice Bergen (no, not [[Creator/CandiceBergen that one]]; the MP for Portage--Lisgar) for the next seven months. In September 2022, Pierre Poilievre (MP for Carleton) was elected leader.
* The Bloc Québécois, having made a comeback in 2019 under the leadership of Yves-François Blanchet (MP for Beloeil--Chambly) after seeming dead and buried for most of the 2010s, appeared to be in a bit of trouble going into the campaign and were initially expected to lose some seats. Then came some unexpected help -- from the moderator of the ''English-language'' debate. Blanchet was asked a question perceived by many in Quebec to be inflammatory and insulting, and the Bloc regained much of their lost support in the following days after being seen as defending Quebec values from the English during the debate. On election night, they made modest progress, slightly improving their popular vote share and winning the same number of seats,[[note]]Initially it appeared they had gained a seat, but this was later overturned on a recount, with the Liberals holding onto it by just 12 votes.[[/note]] cementing their place as the third-largest party in Parliament.

* The People's Party of Canada (PPC), a right-wing libertarian [[StartMyOwn breakaway party]] formed by 2017 Conservative leadership contender Maxime Bernier, had largely been dismissed as a joke party after attracting just 1.6% of the vote in 2019. In 2021, however, while they again failed to win any seats, they more than tripled their share of the popular vote by appealing to the anti-vaccination crowd, moving ahead of the Greens in the popular vote tally. Though questions remain about their ability to win seats in Parliament (especially since Bernier himself went down to a far heavier defeat in his former riding of Beauce than in 2019), it looks like the PPC are in it for the long haul, and could potentially be a thorn in the side of the Conservatives, having cost them seats via vote-splitting in both 2019 and 2021.

Provincial politics tends to have the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP as the primary parties as well, though there are exceptions: both Saskatchewan's Saskatchewan Party and B.C.'s BC United Party[[note]]formerly the B.C. Liberal Party[[/note]] are in practice mergers of provincial Liberals and Conservatives in opposition to both provinces' powerful NDP, Alberta conservatives saw a decade of division between the more conservative Wildrose Party and the old Progressive Conservatives before they reunited in 2017, and Quebec politics is just plain weird because it includes a secessionist-federalist spectrum in addition to the typical left-right and authoritarian-libertarian spectrums.[[note]]It features the slightly left-leaning, separatist Parti Québécois (PQ), the slightly right-leaning, federalist Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), the centre-right, autonomist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), and the openly socialist and separatist Québec Solidaire. In practice, however, the provincial parties in Quebec all have moderate and extreme factions, united more by their position on the sovereignty question than anything else. The 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, former Quebec premier Jean Charest rose to prominence as a Cabinet minister in the 1980s Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, and even became the party's leader after the 1993 wipeout, before becoming leader of the Quebec Liberals.[[/note]] The NDP does frequently win in provincial elections, especially in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia where, for historical reasons, they're the only major left-wing party in a two-party system and thus viable contenders for government by default.

** Following the election of Justin Trudeau's Liberals in the 2015 federal election, the new government pledged to reform the way in which [=MPs=] were elected, following a public consultation. When the public consultation and Commons committee work failed to yield a consensus (arguably by design), and public sentiment ran to electoral methods that Trudeau and his cabinet did not favour, the Liberals abruptly dropped the idea.[[note]]People noticed the coincidence that had the 2015 election been held under some form of proportional representation, the Liberals would have received roughly 15% or 50 seats ''less'' representation and been reduced to a minority government. As an unrelated coincidence, that was about as many [=MPs=] as were elected with absolute majorities of the vote in their respective ridings.[[/note]]

Provincial politics tends to have the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP as the primary parties as well, though there are exceptions: both Saskatchewan's Saskatchewan Party and B.C.'s Liberal Party are in practice mergers of provincial Liberals and Conservatives in opposition to both provinces' powerful NDP, Alberta conservatives saw a decade of division between the more conservative Wildrose Party and the old Progressive Conservatives before they reunited in 2017, and Quebec politics is just plain weird because it includes a secessionist-federalist spectrum in addition to the typical left-right and authoritarian-libertarian spectrums.[[note]]It features the slightly left-leaning, separatist Parti Québécois (PQ), the slightly right-leaning, federalist Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), the centre-right, autonomist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), and the openly socialist and separatist Québec Solidaire. In practice, however, the provincial parties in Quebec all have moderate and extreme factions, united more by their position on the sovereignty question than anything else. The 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, former Quebec premier Jean Charest rose to prominence as a Cabinet minister in the 1980s Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, and even became the party's leader after the 1993 wipeout, before becoming leader of the Quebec Liberals.[[/note]] The NDP does frequently win in provincial elections, especially in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia where, for historical reasons, they're the only major left-wing party in a two-party system and thus viable contenders for government by default.

Another, less significant difference between Canadian and American politics is that the ColorCodedForYourConvenience scheme is partially reversed. In the U.S., "red states" are associated with right-wing conservatism, while "blue states" are associated with left-wing progressivism. In Canada, blue is more traditionally associated with Conservative parties and politics, while Red is the colour of liberal parties and politics.[[note]]With the rise of the Bloc Quebecois, Conservatism has shifted to dark blue while the Bloc is associated with light blue.[[/note]] The U.S. also has no equivalent to the NDP, which is typically associated with orange.

Municipal politics tends to be officially nonpartisan, except in British Columbia and in Montreal, Quebec. However, individual councillors and mayors are often known to have particular partisan and/or ideological leanings -- for example, Jack Layton was a member of the Toronto City Council before he won the leadership of the federal NDP, and the current mayor of Toronto, John Tory, once led the Ontario PC Party and worked for the federal [=PCs=] before they collapsed.

The half-ton gorilla in contemporary Canadian politics has been "national unity". A VocalMinority of Quebecers want Quebec to leave Canada and become an independent country, while many non-separatist Quebecers believe in Quebec having rights to greater autonomy. There have been two referenda on independence, in 1980 and 1995, both of which lost: the first with 60% of the vote, the second with 50.6% of the vote.[[note]]As it happened, then-Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau shot off his mouth in a SoreLoser concession speech at this loss, complaining about how "money and the ethnic vote" thwarted him, which has apparently made getting "winning conditions" for a third independence referendum so far impossible.[[/note]] The Parti Québécois keeps threatening to call another one, though it hasn't had another majority since 1995 with which to try.[[note]]In September 2012, the PQ won a governing minority, with 54 of the Assembly's 125 seats; however, they lost 24 of those seats in the election of March 2014, including that of Premier Pauline Marois.[[/note]] The other federal parties take various positions on how to respond to this, which frequently involve special concessions for Quebec.

* The Green Party were the major losers of the election. After having their best-ever result in the 2019 election, long-time party leader Elizabeth May (MP for Saanich--Gulf Islands) retired and was succeeded by Annamie Paul, who became the first woman of colour to lead a major Canadian political party. Despite an encouraging start to her leadership, which saw Paul only narrowly fail to win a 2020 by-election in Toronto Centre, the party soon descended into infighting, leading to one of the party's three [=MPs=] (Jenica Atwin, who as MP for Fredericton was the first Green MP from outside B.C.) crossing the floor to the Liberals. In the ensuing election, Paul was accused of neglecting the party's political base of British Columbia in favour of trying to make a breakthrough in Ontario, and while the party did succeed in winning their first seat in the province (Mike Morrice picked up Kitchener Centre, largely in part because the Liberals disowned their candidate and ceased campaigning there), they lost their other British Columbia seat of Nanaimo--Ladysmith, leaving them down to two [=MPs=] and, more noticeably, having lost over half their popular vote share from the previous election. As a result, Paul announced her resignation a week after the election, only to change her mind and decide to stay on and fight a leadership review, before changing her mind ''again'' and definitively resigning in November. Amita Kuttner then took over as interim leader, becoming the first non-binary person to lead a major Canadian political party, if only on a temporary basis.[[note]](By tradition, anyone who takes on the interim leadership of a Canadian political party disavows any ambition to become permanent leader, albeit there have been a few exceptions)[[/note]]