Are all Parliamentarians equal? Yes and no. Yes in that each Member of Parliament or each Senator gets one vote and each vote is weighted equally. So whether you are a parliamentarian from Ontario or one of the territories, or the Prime Minister or Opposition House...
Get The Facts
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Government
The problem with the term political party is that it is misleading. There often is not a keg, or red solo cups or even a whole lot of music. In fact they use the term party, in its other sense meaning a group of individuals with a common purpose and...
Elected politicians get a pretty bad rap. Continuously, year after year, politicians rank amongst the least trusted profession in surveys, right in between lawyers and used car salesmen.
If there is one job out there that gets more flak than an elected politician, it is a non-elected politician. Welcome to the thankless life of a Senator.
Canada is a great big country. In fact, it is the second largest country in the world by size (true fact!). However, it is only the 35th largest country by population. Canadians live relatively far away from each other compared to most other nations. This makes...
And no, we’re not talking about your grandmother’s antique hutch in the corner… We’re talking about the group of people who run the show in government. Collectively, the Ministers of the Crown are known as the cabinet. Each minister is responsible for a specific area of...
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Parties
Political parties are large organizations often including hundreds of thousands of members, hundreds of thousands non-members who donate and millions more who vote for their candidates. The whole purpose of a political party is to have their candidates elected in an election in order to advance...
Ever wonder where governments get their ideas for legislation? Ideas come from polls, surveys, the Leader and the team around the Leader, as well as other members of caucus. But the guiding document for any political party in power is the policy platform. Within the policy...
How the NHL is to hockey, the National Council is to party politics. National Council is where federal decisions are made for the party. National Council gets to create, amend or delete by-laws of the party, they control the party’s budget, the membership fees, the rules...
Okay, so you’ve decided that you want to join the political party that best matches your political views, but you’re wondering how you do it. Is joining a political party the same for all parties out there?
This is the big time. The Leader of a political party has an incredible amount of influence and power over the party, the caucus (both in the House of Commons and the Senate), public policy, and even over the members of the party themselves.
Besides being a member of a political party, one of the easiest ways to exert pro-life influence within the party is to become a member of the EDA Board of Directors.
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Bills
Laws have to be accurate, well-written, and leave little to interpretation. This is why they’re written in a very specific way in what many people call legalese (re: lots of whereas’s, hereto’s, and subject to’s). Needless to say, it is just as difficult to write these...
So we have found a parliamentarian to introduce a pro-life law. Regardless of whether it is a cabinet minister, opposition party leader or private member, it all goes through the same process (though at different speeds).
First Reading The very first stage of a bill being introduced in Parliament is known as the first reading. The member (whether or not a cabinet minister) must provide at least 48 hours’ notice to the Speaker before the member introduces the bill to Parliament. The...
It is impossible for the entire chamber of the House of Commons or the Senate to study every piece of legislation in the detail required to create a law. Imagine attending a university where all classes were taught by all professors. Nothing would be accomplished, because...
Report stage After the bill has been amended and passed at committee it is referred back to the chamber for what is known as report stage. At this point any parliamentarian in the chamber may propose amendments to the bill. Once all amendments have been debated...
