The political system of Canada refers to a parliamentary form that is fundamentally different from the presidential form of government. Moreover, in Canada, provincial bodies are significant, since each province of Canada is an independent state within the country, with its laws and its health and educational systems (Heard, 2005). The primary purpose of the paper written is to explain the functioning of the electoral system of Canada and identify its pros and cons.
In the country, only the Lower House of parliament is elected, and the Governor-General appoints the Upper House (Senate) at the suggestion of the Prime Minister. The decision is made using the majority system, that means that the party with a relative majority of votes wins. The House of Representatives is wholly re-elected every five years. Still, as a rule, the government dissolves the House and calls for early elections before the expiration of the five-year term (Carty, 2004). Under the population of each Canadian province or territory, a certain number of seats are allocated in the House. Then the provinces and territories form the borders of single-member constituencies, each of which sends one representative to the House. In elections to the Canadian House of Representatives, a first-past-the-post majority system is in place, and the candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the winner in the district.
The main advantages of the existing electoral system are the creation of direct responsibility of the winning candidate to his voters and the fact that the winning party makes up the majority in parliament. Thus, the majority system forms strong ties between the candidate and his voters (Geddes, 2016). Furthermore, and as a result of its use, it is possible to develop the most substantial bodies of power that can work quite effectively, since the parties included in them have similar views.
Nevertheless, some researchers highlight the disadvantages of the majority system. These shortcomings are the fact that the absence of proportional election reduces the chances of small parties joining the parliament and also makes the election ineffectiveness more frequent and a repeated procedure has to be carried out (Studlar, 2003). However, some candidates who scored an insufficient number of votes find themselves out of politics. In this case, the real balance of political forces is not possible to trace, since national campaigning can be carried out without political representation.
References
- Carty, R. K. (2004). Canada. European journal of political research, 43(7–8), 963–968.
- Geddes, J. (2016). Rebooting Canadian democracy. Maclean’s, 129(24).
- Heard, A. (2005). Steps toward making every vote count: Electoral system reform in Canada and its provinces. Canadian Journal of political science/Revue Canadienne de science politique, 38(04).
- Studlar, D. T. (2003). Consequences of the unreformed Canadian electoral system. The American review of Canadian studies, 33(3), 313–338.