Monarchy
As per the Constitution Act, 1867, Canada is a constitutional monarchy, wherein the role of the reigning sovereign is both legal and practical, but not political. The Crown is regarded as a corporation, with the monarch, vested as she is with all powers of state, at the centre of a construct in which the power of the whole is shared by multiple institutions of government acting under the sovereign's authority; the Crown has thus been described as the underlying principle of Canada's institutional unity, with the executive formally called the Queen-in-Council, the legislature the Queen-in-Parliament, and the courts as the Queen on the Bench.
Royal Assent and the royal sign-manual are required to enact laws, letters patent, and orders in council, though the authority for these acts stems from the Canadian populace and, within the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy, the sovereign's direct participation in any of these areas of governance is limited. While Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada, "truly Canadian" and "totally independent from that of the Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms", as an individual she is also the head of state of 15 other countries in the Commonwealth of Nations. As Queen of Canada, Her Majesty appoints a viceregal representative, the governor general, currently David Lloyd Johnston. Since 1947, the governor general has been permitted to exercise almost all of the sovereign's Royal Prerogative, though some powers do remain the Queen's alone. Further, the monarch and governor general typically follow the near-binding advice of their ministers of the Crown in Cabinet. It is important to note, however, that the Royal Prerogative belongs to the Crown and not to any of the ministers, who rule "in trust" for the monarch and, upon losing the confidence of the elected House of Commons, must relinquish the Crown's power back to it, whereupon a new government, which can hold the lower chamber's confidence, is installed by the governor general. The royal and viceroyal figures may unilaterally use these powers in exceptional constitutional crisis situations. Politicians can sometimes try to use to their favour the complexity of the relationship between the monarch, viceroy, ministers, and parliament, and the public's general unfamiliarity with it.
The Canadian monarchy is a federal one in which the Crown is unitary throughout all jurisdictions in the country, with the headship of state being a part of all equally. As such, the sovereignty of the federal and provincial regions is passed on not by the governor general or federal parliament, but through the overreaching Crown itself. Though singular, the Crown is thus "divided" into eleven legal jurisdictions, or eleven "crowns"— one federal and ten provincial. A lieutenant governor serves as the Queen's representative in each province, carrying out all the monarch's constitutional and ceremonial duties of state on her behalf.
Read more about this topic: Government Of Canada
Famous quotes containing the word monarchy:
“How can a monarchy be a suitable thing, which allows a man to do as he pleases with none to hold him to account. And even if you were to take the best man on earth, and put him into a monarchy, you put outside him the thoughts that usually guide him.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
“The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)