3 Branches of Canada's Federal Government

*The Governor General grants "Royal Assent" NOT "royal consent." Super embarrassed and sorry about that!*
Video Transcript:

Let’s learn about Canada’s three branches of Federal Government.

First of all, what is the Federal Government?

It’s the level of government that deals with National laws. Things that deal with the entire country.

That’s different then the Provincial Government which deals with the laws of the province

And the municipal government which deals with the laws of your city.

The Federal Government might deal with laws for the whole country, but they meet together in Ottawa .

Federal. Perhaps you feel FED up with Federal because they are so far away from you, but actually, the Federal government is made up of people from all over the country coming together to make important laws about defence, trade with other countries, money, immigration, fishing and oceans, and criminal laws.

The Federal Government is divided into three branches to have check and balances so that no one gets too powerful.

legislative, Executive, and Judicial

The legislative create laws (decides what’s Legal. Legal legislative), the Executive enforces the laws (Executes the law Execute executive) , and the Judicial which judges what the meaning of the laws are (judges law judge judicial.)

Let’s take a closer look at the Legislative branch. It’s also called the Parliament. It has three branches itself. The House of Commons, the Senate, and the Queen or King.

The house of Commons forms the bills that become law, The Senate can veto the bills, and the Queen or King approves the bills.

Let’s focus on each of the Legislative or Parliament branches.

The House of commons is the most important branch. But it’s called the lower house because it’s made of common people from communities. Common People in the house of Commons. These are the guys that you vote for from your home. They represent you, which makes us a Representative democracy.

You are riding on what they decide, so where they come from is called a riding.

People in the House of commons are called Members of Parliament “Members Parliament” or MPs and they elect a leader called the Speaker of the house.

And don’t forget, The House of Commons is where laws are formed

But then laws can be vetoed, or shut down by the next branch of the Legislature or Parliament. That branch is the Senate run by senators. These senators are not chosen by you and I but they do come from all over the country, and once they get to be a senator, they don’t have to leave until they’re 75 years old.

One idea behind having a branch that is not elected is that it should be harder to manipulate them. You can’t say to them “If you do this, you’ll never get reelected.” They can be confident of their place and act on their conscience.

And they can still get kicked out for accepting bribes and doing illegal stuff.

But since they don’t actually represent the people, they don’t have much power. Yet they are still called the Upper house. Often they are of the Upper class.

That leaves one more branch of the Parliament. The King or Queen.

Having Royalty who has to obey our constitutional laws, makes us a Constitutional Monarchy.

But let’s be honest. The Queen is in charge of 16 different countries, she lives really far away, and well, let’s face it, she’s old. So she has someone represent her called the Governor General.

The Governor General’s main job is to approve laws, or give her “royal consent.” This isn’t too much power because she knows what has happened in other countries where royalty refused to approve laws. They lost their power of having a say in law.

And so, The Legislative or Parliament branch is made up of the House of commons, senate and Governor General which together make laws.

Lets move on to the Executive branch. The part of the Federal government that makes sure laws are obeyed.

There are three main branches. The Prime Minister, his Cabinet and…you guessed it. The King or Queen.

Of course yet again, the King or queen is represented by the Governor General.

The Prime Minister is the most powerful person in all of Canada. He is the chosen leader of the political party that wins the most votes.