The Canadian Political System

Canadian Political System
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Canadian Political System
Introduction
Due to its intricate nature, the Canadian political system has attracted much interest from neutrals. This has been further complicated by the fact that the country is a mix of French and English influences. Therefore, whatever happens on the political front has to revolve around establishing a balance between these two influences. Luckily enough, its system is tried and tested over time, giving it one of the world’s most stable systems of governance. Much of the country’s system of governance is derived from the British, right from the grassroots level all the way up. It pits interesting scenarios where there is a democratically elected body of representatives while also providing scenarios where the party with the most votes doesn’t necessarily be the government leader.
How Parties Get Into Power in the Canadian Political System
In the Canadian political system, democracy is the rule. Democracy is viewed as such if all the elements put in place are based on democratic institutions (Malcomson et al., 2016). Parties get into power by being democratically elected by the people. In this case, the majority wins; but the majority has to be in the number of seats in parliament. It is worth noting that Canada is a constitutional monarchy, deriving much of its system from that of the UK. While the Canadian voters elect the MPs, the representation of each party in the parliament determines which one gets into power. Naturally, the party with the most seats wins and runs the government. Most seats are essentially more than half the seats in parliament.
A majority government will be formed in the case where one party wins the most seats in parliament. There are, however, situations whereby no party wins the majority of the seats, resulting in a minority government. Under such a scenario, the bigger party among the minorities will have to form a formal or informal coalition with one of the parties. They can then come into an arrangement whereby the other party supports the bigger party through supporting the bills it tables in parliament (Statistics Canada, 2017). The smaller party, in return, gets some of its members selected in the sessions and seats within parliament; while also having some of its policies taken up by the bigger party (Bickerton & Gagnon, 2020). There will still be a government formed in both situations since going back on the campaign trail is a tedious, draining, and expensive task for all the parties involved.
What it means to “win” an election
Winning an election in Canada is quite interesting since it pits the popular vote against the seats won. The country has a first-past-the-post voting system. A voter only has one ballot to vote for only one candidate in this system. This system, however, can lead to quite some confusion whereby one party wins popular votes but ends up with very few seats in parliament. This also means that it is quite possible for a party to garner less than half of the popular vote but more than half of the seats (Barnes, Bedad, & Spano, 2012). As can be seen, winning an election in the Canadian political system calls for winning the seats rather than the popular vote, even though the popular vote might be important. Therefore, it means winning the majority seats and having a significant chunk of the popular vote.
Voters’ role in deciding which party wins the election and which party leader gets to be Prime Minister
According to Herron et al. (2018), Canada has a system where its representative regions are divided into portions called ridings. These ridings are usually at least one in every Canadian province or territory, each with its population and voters. If a province has a big population, then its riding will also be more. Presently, the number of ridings in the country stands at 338 (loprespub, 2020). The voters’ role is usually quite limited at the grassroots, where they exercise their duty in democracy by electing their MPs. As initially noted, the country has a first-past-the-post voting system. A voter only has one ballot to vote for only one candidate in this system. Canadians usually vote for their candidates of choice, and the individual that garners the most voters within their constituencies becomes the Member of Parliament for that constituency (Lecomte, 2018). However, the country’s Prime Minister is not voted directly by the people. It is the parliament that usually determines the winner of the election. Going by this, the party with the most seats has its leader as the Prime Minister. Elections are usually held at least once every four years unless there are technicalities in between that result in the opposite. These technicalities can include a vote of no confidence in parliament or a dissolution of the parliament by the Governor-General upon advice from the Prime Minister. In the parliamentary form of liberal democracy (Mintz et al., 2012), governments can change right within the election terms.
While the FPTP system employed by Canada is easy to understand and implement, it offers a number of challenges. First, it provides a situation where the winner takes all, making the elections a do-or-die affair. Such a scenario is quite tricky since the marginalized part of the population, such as women and natives, will continue being marginalized (Barnes, Lithwick, & Virgint, ...