Systems in the Canadian Goverment

The Canadian Government is made up of not only one system, but four systems that build up Canada which are:

• Constitutional monarchy
• Representative democracy
• The Federal system
• A party system

Constitutional Monarchy
The Constitutional Monarchy is a system which follows British political traditions. They recognized the monarch (the Queen, currently Queen Elizabeth II ) as the head of the state and this plays a symbolic role to Canadians. The monarch does not live in Canada so the Governor General represents the monarch in Canada and is appointed by the Canadian government. The Governor General plays an important role because he/she opens parliament, gives royal assent of bills, appoints officials and many more jobs.

Representative Democracy
It is a system which allows  citizens to govern the nation by electing officials and vesting power on them. These elected officials are accountable to the public. This is a different system from direct democracy which citizens directly influence the decisions of the government instead of selecting representatives.

Federal System
The Federal system is a very important system where power is distributed across three levels.  The three levels are federal (nation), provincial (province) and municipal(city). The Federal government makes decisions on behalf of all citizens and governs postal service, RCMP, Pensions etc. The provincial government handles  decisions like education, medical care  and highways. The municipal government handles issues with the closest contact with individual citizens and provides services like public transit, water supply, and garbage disposal. These systems are further broken down into three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. 

Party Systems
This system has representatives from all three levels of governments that belong to political parties. These parties are groups of people we have similar ideologies and plans on how to best govern. The political parties promote their ideologies to become a government policy. The political parties are classified by the use of the political spectrum.The three major parties are the Conservative party, Liberal party and the New Democratic Party. Bloc Quebecois is another party, but operates only at the federal level.