How Canadians govern themselves

Ask the official guide what kind of country Canada is and you get three answers at once. Canada is a federal state, a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. Each of those words carries a piece of the machine. Federal state means the work of governing is split between one national government and the provinces. Parliamentary democracy means Canadians elect the people who make the laws. Constitutional monarchy means the head of state is a hereditary Sovereign, a Queen or a King, who reigns in accordance with the Constitution, which is to say under the rule of law.

The democratic part is the part you can watch from the street. Canadians elect members to the House of Commons in Ottawa, and they elect members to the provincial and territorial legislatures. Those representatives carry three duties: passing laws, approving and monitoring expenditures, and keeping the government accountable. Every dollar the federal government spends has to pass through that second duty.

Cabinet ministers answer to those elected representatives. The guide puts it in one phrase: ministers must retain the confidence of the House. If they are defeated in a non-confidence vote, they have to resign. That rule is why a Canadian government can fall in the middle of its term, on an ordinary sitting day in the House.

The split of responsibilities is written down, and it is old. In 1867 the British North America Act, known today as the Constitution Act, 1867, set out which government handles what. Matters of national and international concern went to the federal government in Ottawa. Matters closer to home went to the provinces.

The federal list is short enough to learn by heart, and the test expects you to know it: defence, foreign policy, interprovincial trade and communications, currency, navigation, criminal law, and citizenship. If a decision touches the border, the money or the Criminal Code, it belongs to Ottawa.

The provincial list runs: municipal government, education, health, natural resources, property and civil rights, and highways. Two fields sit in both columns, shared between the federal government and the provinces: agriculture and immigration. Every province elects its own Legislative Assembly. Its members are called MLAs, MNAs in Quebec, MPPs in Ontario, or MHAs, depending on the province, or simply members. The three territories do not have provincial status, though their assemblies carry out many of the same functions.

Below the provinces sits the government you are most likely to deal with first. A municipal government is led by a mayor or a reeve, with councillors or aldermen elected alongside. It looks after social and community health, recycling programs, transportation and utilities, snow removal, policing, firefighting and emergency services.

The laws a council passes are called by-laws, and they are the rules most people bump into first, long before they ever read a federal statute. Policing appears at all three levels of the guide's table: federal, provincial in Ontario and Quebec, and municipal across the country.

First Nations have their own elected leadership. Band chiefs and councillors are responsible for services on reserves, including housing and schools.

Parliament has three parts: the Sovereign, the Senate and the House of Commons. Nothing becomes law in Ottawa without all three. The House of Commons is the elected part, the one whose members Canadians choose, traditionally every four years.

The Senate is appointed. Senators are named by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister, and they keep the seat until they turn 75. The provinces run a smaller version of the same arrangement: a provincial legislature comprises the Lieutenant Governor and the elected Assembly.

The guide and the practice material built from it were written while the Sovereign was a queen, so they still say the Queen. The Sovereign today is King Charles III. It is the same office under a different holder, and the test asks the question the way the guide frames it, so treat Queen, King and Sovereign as the same answer.

Follow a single idea through the building. It starts as a bill. At first reading the bill is considered read for the first time and is printed, so every member has the text in hand. At second reading, members debate the bill's principle, the question of whether the idea is worth pursuing at all. Then comes committee stage, where committee members study the bill clause by clause.

Back in the chamber comes report stage, where members can make other amendments, and then third reading, where they debate the bill one last time and vote on it. If it passes, the bill goes to the Senate, which puts it through a similar process.

The seventh step is royal assent, granted by the Governor General on behalf of the Sovereign. No bill can become law in Canada until it has been passed by both chambers and has received royal assent.

The Sovereign is Canada's head of state. The role is hereditary and deliberately non-partisan. The guide calls the Sovereign the focus of citizenship and allegiance, a symbol of Canadian sovereignty, a guardian of constitutional freedoms and a reflection of our history. As Head of the Commonwealth, the Sovereign links Canada to 53 other nations. The head of government is the Prime Minister, who actually directs the governing of the country.

The Sovereign does not live here, so the Crown is represented by people who do. The Governor General represents the Sovereign in Canada, appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister, usually for five years. In each of the ten provinces a Lieutenant Governor does the same work, appointed by the Governor General on the Prime Minister's advice, normally for five years. In the three territories a Commissioner represents the federal government rather than the Sovereign, in a ceremonial role. The head of a provincial government is called the Premier.

All of it sorts into three branches. The executive is the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. The legislative branch is Parliament: the Sovereign, the Senate and the House of Commons. The judicial branch is the courts, headed by the Supreme Court of Canada and its nine judges, who are appointed by the Governor General, with the Federal Court of Canada and the provincial courts beneath it.