ABSTRACT
Constitutional situation Canada is a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy within a constitutional monarchy. The current state came into existence when the Constitution Act, 1867 1 united three British North American colonies (the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) as ‘one Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’. The new state adopted and tailored institutions to deal with and accommodate the evolution of its unique political history: Canada, for example, is a federal state. Nevertheless, the Dominion of Canada retained a noticeably British fl avour; the preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867, states that Canada will have ‘a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom’. Although many of the formal political ties to Britain have weakened or disappeared since then, those that remain are entrenched and quite visible. Canada and the United Kingdom share a head of state, the British monarch, who in Canada is represented by the governor general (GG), and at the provincial level of government by the lieutenant governors. Canada’s bicameral parliamentary organization is fi rmly situated in the Westminster tradition: the lower house, the House of Commons, contains 308 seats which are fi lled by members of parliament (MPs) who are elected by way of a single-member plurality electoral system; the upper house, the Senate, contains 105 appointed members who represent the 10 provinces and three territories. Senators are appointed by the GG on the recommendation of the prime minister (PM). Accountability and responsibility are ensured in principle by the government’s need to retain the confi dence of a majority in the House of Commons.
