Poli 1119: Canadian Politics and Government Final Terms

"Judicialization of Politics"

In Canada today, the judiciary plays a large part in the governing of our country. The courts originally held power only over issues of federalism - which powers were give to the federal government and which were given to the provinces. On this issue, the courts could invalidate laws of the government if they violated the principles of federalism. Since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect, the courts have played a huge role on Canada's government. They now have the power to invalidate laws that they find in contrast to the Charter. Reference cases also have the government coming to the courts before they pass laws to check their validity by Charter standards. Courts also have the power to "interpret" laws - flushing out meaning of certain laws and clarifying any vague language in laws.

Reference questions/cases

A reference case is a case where the government will send a question to the courts asking them about the constitutionality of a proposed law, based on the Charter. The courts will take the case on and make their ruling. This means that rather than passing a law and then having it challenged in the courts, the government can see if it is constitutional before they pass it.

Parliamentary standing committees

After second reading, bills go to a parliamentary standing committee for study. These committees are made up from people from different parties. The Chair has been elected since 2002, but the hand of PMO is almost always evident. Other members are chosen by the party leaders or whips. These committees study the bill in depth, often bringing forth witnesses to testify for or against the bill. The committees also have the power to propose amendments to the bill, as long as they do not alter the bill fundamentally.

Progressive Conservative Party

After the title of "Progressive" was added to the Conservative party in 1942, they tried to rebuild themselves. They embraced a tradition of "Red" Toryism, which included social insurance policies and more social programs. They had some success from 1956 to 1993 under Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney. Under Mulroney they went again in another direction, favouring free trade, decentralization and business liberalism over Red Toryism. Discontent started to grow for their party, particular in the West where the Reform party was beginning to take center stage. In the 1993 election they crashed and burned, going to fifth place in parliament with only 16% of the vote. The party never got its wind back after that and in 2003 it was merged with Canadian Alliance.

Judicial Independence

Because of the large role that the judiciary now plays in Canadian politics, its independence is crucial. Judges need to be free from "fear or favour". Several safeguards exist to help this happen. Judges hold security of tenure - they cannot be fired easily, if at all. They hold office on "good behaviour" and it takes a vote by both houses to agree to remove them from their job. This protects them against the fear of being fired for political reasons. Judges' salaries are also fixed by Parliament, so that they cannot be bribed for political reasons with salary increases. Also, ministers are forbidden to contact judges at all, which is hoped will make them more independent of the legislative and executive side of political workings. Judges are also supposed to act as impartially as possible. They used to not even possess the right to vote, but they now do. However, they are expected not to make comments or voice opinions on contentious issues.

Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney was a Conservative leader who was Prime Minster from 1984 until 1993. He had one of the strongest majority governments of any Conservative, when the party got 50% of the vote in the 1984 election. He managed to unite both the west and the Quebec nationalists, at least for a time. Mulroney was one of the only Conservative leaders to be able to get strong support from Quebec. He took the party in a new direction, towards free trade, which was popular in Quebec, no-liberalism and decentralization. Kim Campbell took over for him in 1993 and the party fell apart with its most resounding defeat. Mulroney also inherited the aftermaths of the Charter and the patriation of the constitution and he presided over both the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord. Both failed.

Brokerage Politics

Brokerage politics refers to the dominate type of party politics in Canadian history. It has traditionally been practiced by the federal Conservatives and Liberals and refers to an attempt to seek support from a broad range of interests and from various different spectrums of society. Brokerage politics is the opposite of ideological politics. Brokerage parties seek to cut across the lines of cleavages - class, race, language, ect. This means they often stray away from contentious ideological concerns and focus on things like strong leadership and honest and competent governments - things that everybody wants in a government. Brokerage politics are good because they foster a sense of national integration, they avoid sectarian politics and they reflect the fairly non-ideological bend of most Canadians. The drawback of them though is that they often produce shallow debates and a lack of innovation as no party wants to stray into unknown territory and risk losing public support.

Business Liberalism

Business liberalism was a ideology popular within the Liberal party between 1921-1963 and between 1993-2015. It emphasized a limited role for the state, fostering business investment and minimizing social spending. The Liberals have gone from it to welfare liberalism at different points throughout their lifetime.

First-Past-the-Post Electoral system

Canada has operated under the FPTP electoral system since it first began holding elections. The principle of FPTP is that whatever candidate gets the most votes in a given riding wins. While this is perfectly acceptable in a two party system, in a system where there is four or even five parties, this means that the winning party will rarely have an actual majority of the votes. It also means that smaller parties are severely disadvantaged - they may get 3.4% of the national vote and only elect one member of parliament, as was the case with the Green party in the 2015 election. Under FPTP, their vote was spread out between different constituencies and largely wasted. The main effect of FPTP is that the proportion of the power a political party holds in government is very rarely the same as the proportion of the popular vote for that party. Today's Liberals hold strong majority government with only 39% of the popular vote.First-Past-the-Post Electoral system

Class-based politics

Class-based politics is the opposite of brokerage politics, in a way. Class-based politics is when a party will tailor their message to a certain class. For instance, the many small parties that have, throughout history, garnered support from farmers, from labours, or from small businesses. The bigger parties have also gone through times of tailoring themselves to get support from business. Class-based politics result in a left-right polarization, which is common in places like Germany, Australia and Britain. This type of politics has become popular in some Canadian provinces, but has not met with success on the federal level. Canadians do not have as much of an awareness of class as places like Britain do. The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives have made their parties adaptable to whatever the current political culture is so as to gain success. There was some speculation about whether Canada was shifting to class-based politics when the NDP gained so much success in the 2011 election, but the 2015 election seemed to prove that Canadians really do favour brokerage politics over ideological, class-based politics.

Door-to-door enumeration

Door-to-door enumeration refers to a house-to-house survey that used to be used to register voters for elections. Nowadays, the federal government and many provincial governments do not do door-to-door enumeration on the grounds that it is too costly and time-consuming. Instead, they keep a permanent voters list, which contains the address and names of all registered voters and can be updated online or by mail. The responsibility of registering has now been shifted into the hands of the voters, which some say discourages voter turnout by making it harder to register.

Electoral redistribution

Every ten years, at the time of the 10-year census, the House of Commons seats are relocated to account for shifts in population. Provinces can gain new seats if their population has increased, but they cannot lose seats, regardless of whether or not their population goes down. The electoral redistribution takes into account the population of provinces and whether or not to award new seats to certain provinces, but it also takes into account shifting populations within a region. Every riding should have a population of around 100,000 voters, though +/- 25% disparities are allowed due to the vastly underpopulated north (to have 100,000 voters per riding would make some ridings too geographically huge.) Ridings are drawn up by an independent, non-partisan committee in each province and then approved by the government.

Free vote

Free votes are rare in the House of Commons. A free vote is just as it sounds. Every MP is allowed to vote however they feel with no regard for party discipline or toeing the party line. When Paul Martin was Prime Minster, he implemented a system of 3-line voting. Votes would either be a 1 (free vote), a 2 (cabinet solidarity, but backbenchers free) or a 3 (whipped vote). While he was in office, from 2004-2005, there were far more free votes, but the practice fell into disuse when his time as PM ended.

Stephen Harper

He began as leader of the Canadian Alliance in 2002 and then went on to be leader of the new Progressive Conservatives after their merger with the Alliance. He was elected in 2006 and was in office for almost 10 years. He brought a very ideological twist with him to the Conservative party and completely styled the party after himself, going so far as to call it the "Harper government". He loved the oil sands, hated the environment, cancelled Canada's Kyoto Protocol agreement and crushed democracy in government by muzzling scientists and refusing to let his MPs or Cabinet ministers speak to the public. He was pretty much completely evil.

Party Discipline

In Canada, party discipline is usually pretty strict. For almost all votes in parliament, party members are told which ways to vote by their party whip. The job of party 'whip' is to keep everyone in the party on the same page and keep them voting in accordance to the party line. In Britian, party discipline is much more lax and there are more free votes, but here it can get to the point where argumentative MPs can be kicked out of their party. Members are motivated to vote with their party based on the promise of further rewards from their leaders, general party loyalty, and the concept of strength in numbers - that they will be more protected from the media, lobbyists, ect if they stay with the pack. Party discipline is also caused by the principle of responsible government - the idea that if the government is defeated in certain votes, they are forced to step down or call an election. The governing party does not want to allow a free vote and then be overturned and kicked out of office because some of their own members voted against them, and MPs of the governing party don't want to accidentally overturn their government.

Unitary (integrated) court system

In a unitary court system, the provincial and federal courts deal with matters both of provincial and federal nature. It is possible to appeal something from a provincial court to the Supreme Court of Canada. This is in contrast to the United States dual court system where there are parallel federal state court systems that are barely connected.

Welfare Liberalism

In contrast to business liberalism, welfare liberalism promoted greater social equality, anti poverty measures and some universal programs. It was the dominate tendency of the Liberal party between 1963-1984 and has recently been rejuvenated by new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Jack Layton

Jack Layton was the leader of the NDP party between 2003 and his death in August of 2011. He led the NDP to historic highs while leader; the party received 103 seats (30% of the vote) in 2011 and became Official Opposition for the first time. The made large gains in Quebec, securing 59 of 75 seats in that province at the expense of the Bloc. Elsewhere across Canada, the NDP was seen as a better alternative to the Conservatives than Michael Ignatieff's Liberals. Layton emphasized public investment in conservation and green industries and federal policies to combat homelessness and child poverty. He died unexpectedly of cancer in August of 2011 and left the NDP to scramble for a new leader. They elected Thomas Mulcair as Layton's successor.

Parliament reform

Most proposals of parliamentary reform center around making party discipline less strict by allowing for more free votes. When Paul Martin was Prime Minster, he implemented a system of 3-line voting. Votes would either be a 1 (free vote), a 2 (cabinet solidarity, but backbenchers free) or a 3 (whipped vote). While he was in office, from 2004-2005, there were far more free votes, but the practice fell into disuse when his time as PM ended. Other reforms in the past have made it so that the Speaker is elected by secret ballot (this happened in 1986) and so that there are more Private Member's Bills.

"One-Member-One-Vote"

OMOV is a method of electing party leaders. Previously, leaders have been elected at national leadership conventions. Most parties have now changed to OMOV, which allows all card carrying members of the party to vote for party leadership. Party members can vote by phone, mail, online, or in paper at the local level. This eliminates the costs of a national convention and means that everyone can vote, rather than restricting voting to those who can afford to make it to the convention. Its drawbacks are that some members may vote who know little about the candidates, or who don't truly support the party at all. There is also the risk of an unresponsive electoral with a ow voter turnout. Despite this, most parties now use OMOV. The Liberals made the shift fully in 2009.

Bill of Rights (1960)

Passed by John Diefenbaker to try to guarantee individual rights. However, the Bill was largely a failure, for a number of reasons. It was not entrenched in the constitution, so it was just an ordinary Act of Parliament. This was done so that it could be easily passed, without the hassle of getting agreement from all the provinces, but it also meant that it could be amended easily. It was also superseded by the War Measures Act. Secondly, the Act did not apply to the provinces, but solely to the federal government. And lastly, the main reason for the Bill of Rights' failure was the courts. They ruled fairly quickly not to apply the Bill on the grounds that ordinary acts of Parliament cannot "tie the hands of future parliaments".

Preston Manning

Preston Manning was the leader of the Reform Party. He had the financial support of wealthy businessmen and founded the party in 1987 in Vancouver with this support and with the rise of western alienation in Canada. He led the party to its unprecedented success in 1993 but was then replaced by Stockwell Day in 2000, just after the party changed its name to the Canadian Alliance.

Private Member's Bill

Private member bills are bills introduced by MPs that are not in the Cabinet - government supporters or opposition. They are rarely made into law. Only five hours every week are spent on private member's bills. In each session of parliament, 20 MPs are picked via a lottery for PMBs, and from those only 6 are chosen to be introduced to parliament and discussed.

Proportional representation

Proportional representation is seen as the alternative electoral system to First-Past-the-Post. The goal of PR electoral systems is to make every vote have the same weight, regardless of where it is cast and who it is cast for. A PR system would eliminate the so-called "vote-splitting" of the FPTP system, which almost always gives parties an amount of power that is not proportional to the percentage of the popular vote they received. There are many methods of achieving PR. One is to abolish constituencies altogether and instead simply elect MPs on a per-province biases - if a party gets 30% of the support in a province, they get 30% of the seats in that provinces. However, this would probably never work in Canada do to the regional nature of our politics. Another version of PR is the single-transferable vote, or STV. In STV, each constituency would be larger and would elect several members of parliament. Voters would be given a ballot with all candidates in all parties listed and they would rank these candidates by preference. A third version of PR is mixed-member proportional, or MMP. In this method, individual constituencies, elected under FPTP, would remain, though there would be fewer of them. The other half of the House of Commons would be elected by PR and would not be attached to any particular constituency. The idea of this method is that the PR elected members would help to balance the uneven effects of FPTP.

Prorogation of Parliament

Prorogation of parliament is a power given to the governor general of Canada, but only used "on the advice" of the PM. Prorogation refers to ending a session of parliament. This can be done for several reasons - some innocent, such as simply finishing with everything on the agenda of that session of parliament. However, prorogation has also been used for more nefarious purposes. In 2008, for instance, Harper ended a session of parliament to stop the opposition parties from having the chance to vote non-confidence. The Liberals and NDP had partnered together to get Harper's government out of office, but when the Conservative leader found out about this he ran to the governor general, then Michaelle Jean, who prorogated parliament, thus making it impossible for Harper to be voted out of office. By the time a new session was called, the Liberals had a new leader - Michael Ignatieff - and the partnership between them and the NDP was gone.

Red Tories

Red Toryism was a leaning that the Conservatives took around 1942. It was more socially minded form of Conservatism that focused on the "Progressive" element of the party's name. It combined values with the traditional conservatism.

Reasonable Limits clause (s. 1 of Charter)

Section 1 of the Charter is a potentially giant loophole in the law of the Charter. It allows government to make laws that break the Charter "within reasonable limits". This was defined in the Oakes (1983) case as a law that has an important goal, and whose means of reaching this goal are in proportion with the goal, and violate the Charter in the most minimal ways possible. For instance, picking j-walkers off with sniper rifles may have the arguably important goal of stopping people from j-walking, but the means are in no way proportional to the goal. So this wouldn't be seen as "within reasonable limits". However, restricting the age of people who get pensions, while seemingly violating the Charter by being age discriminatory, is allowed because it falls under "reasonable limits" of violation, and is seen to serve an important goal. Because of this clause, Charter cases often happen in two stages. In the first, the government argues that their law does not violate the Charter. If it is seen to violate the Charter, then in stage two, the government will argue that it does so within reasonable limits.

Section 96 Courts

Section 96 courts are Superior, district and county courts, such as the BC Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of BC. They are administered by the provinces, but their judges are appointed by the federal government. For the most part, this court makes the final decisions for cases appealed to it, though some cases can be appealed to the SCC. While the judges are appointed by and paid for by the federal government, the province can decide how many judges will sit on its court.

Stephane Dion

Stephane Dion was the leader of the Liberal party from 2006 to 2008. He struggled as leader due to inheriting an indebted party and having to deal with Conservative attack ads. After the 2008 election that formed a minority Conservative government, he announced he would be stepping down as leader. Then, in November of that year, the NDP and Liberals joined forces with the hope of voting Harper's government down and forming their own coalition government of which Dion would be Prime Minister. However, Harper prorogated parliament and stopped them from voting, and Dion did follow through on his promise to step down. Michael Ignatieff replaced him.

Bloc Quebecois

The Bloc Quebecois is a party designed to represent the Quebecois people. The Bloc is a separatist party that formed in 1990 in the aftermath of the demise of the Meech Lake Accord. It rose out of a resurgence of the Quebec independence movement when several Conservative and Liberal MPs from Quebec rose and "crossed the floor" of the House of Commons to leave their party and begin the Bloc. It has gone through highs and lows like any party, with many fearing it to be on its deathbed in the last election, until it clawed its way to 10 seats in the 2015 election. It held majority support in Quebec in all elections between 1993 and 2008. In the 2011 election is was all but swept away by Jack Layton's NDP, going from 49 seats to just 4.

Cooperative Commonwealth Federation

The CCF party was the forerunner of the NDP. It existed between 1932 and 1960 and was very left leaning. It was a party of farmers and trade unions and it was sometimes seen more as a movement than just a party. It articulated a vision for a new society - for a new economy based on "supplying human needs and not the making of profits". In its Regina Manifesto, it pledged that "No CCF government will rest until it has eradicated capitalism". It was in favour of democratic socialism. The CCF rose in popularity during WW11 because the wartime economic policies gave it credibility - showing that economic plans like it had been proposing could in fact work. CCF became the official opposition party in BC in 1941 and in Ontario in 1943 and it was elected in Saskatchewan in 1944. The business community rebelled against it and launched a whole-hearted attack against it. They needn't have worried - the party crested in 1945 and then began to decline post-war. It was especially damaged by the "Reds under the beds" communism scare of the Cold War. It tried to repair itself by taking a more center-left approach, but it was never able to and eventually transformed itself into the NDP in 1961.

Canadian Judicial Council

The Canadian Judicial Council was created in 1971 and consists of all the chief justices and associate chief justices of courts staffed by federally appointed judges. It is chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Its main role is to deal with complaints raised against individual judges. It also has a role in the continuing education of judges, as well as providing a forum for developing consensus among its members. It also makes representations to the government in regards to salaries and benefits for its members.

Representation by population

The House of Commons is organized on a principle of representation by population - the more populace provinces have more members of parliament. The Senate, on the other hand, is divided by equal regional representation. For the House of Commons, the seat count is readjusted every ten years to account for population changes, though seats cannot be removed, only added.

Liberal Party

The Liberal party began in the 19th century with a lean towards small business and farmers. It was pro free trade with the US, pro provincial rights and more nationalist than the Tories. It began to gain support in the 20th century and had some very long-serving Prime Ministers, including Wilfred Laurier and Pierre Trudeau. The Liberal party was helped by its ideological flexibility and its brokerage tendencies. It had a business liberalism (limited role of state, foster business investment, minimize social spending) leaning between 1921-1963 and between 1993-2015. Between 1963-1984 however, it took the approach of welfare liberalism (promote social equality, anti-poverty, ect), an approach which was rejuvenated in the 2015 election. The Liberal party suffered a historic defeat in the 2011 federal election, falling for the first time to third place and only holding 19% of the popular vote. While some speculated that the Liberal party may have run its course, and many people thought that the possibility of an NDP government was rising, the Liberals elected new leader Justin Trudeau, who led their party to a sweeping majority government under an approach of social liberalism and "sunny ways" politics.

New Democratic Party

The NDP party emerged out of the ashes of the CCF party in 1961 and exists still today. It is a left leaning party, but nowhere near as left as the CCF was. It had much better success within provinces than the CCF and has elected several provincial governments - in Sask, Manitoba, BC, Ontario, Nova Scotia and, recently, Alberta. NDP is very labour-centered and supports a larger role for government and for increases to corporate taxes - usually, though the current NDP took a step back from taxes as a whole. Their social policy includes denticare and pharmacare, increases to minimum wage and publicly funded social housing. Its support of labour has not paid off all that much, as efforts by trade unions to get their members to vote NDP has largely failed. The party did extremely well under Jack Layton and rose to 30% of the popular vote in 2011. The NDP went in a slightly different direction after Layton's death, with democratic socialism being purged from its mandate in 2013. Some people have said that Thomas Mulcair took the party so far to the center that the Liberals were more left. Indeed, this showed in the fact that Mulcair said he would balance the budget, while Trudeau said he would have deficits. The NDP were returned to their former place of third in the 2015 election.

Canadian Alliance Party

The Reform Party transformed into the Canadian Alliance Party in 1999 in an effort to appeal more broadly to the whole of Canada. They watered down their right leanings - for instance, by supporting bilingualism. Even with these tactics, they saw little progress in the 2000 election under party leader Stockwell Day, who was not a popular leader. Stephen Harper became leader in 2002 and the party merged with the Conservatives in 2003. They kept the Conservative name but adopted practices from both parties.

Reform Party

The Reform party existed from 1987 to 1999. It began largely because of a sense of western alienation and quickly rose in popularity. By the 1990s it had grown from a western party to one that ran candidates in every riding. It garnered 19% of the popular vote in the 1993 election, bypassing the PC party and leaving it in a stunning fifth place. The Reform party was a far right party that favoured free market capitalism, social conservatism (traditional values, anti-gay, critical of multi culturism, was unilingualism, pro-life and for capital punishment) and "populism" (ie, listening to the "common people". It's support dropped after 1993 and in 1999 it transformed into the Canadian Alliance party.

The Senate

The Senate is the upper chamber (105 seats) of the Canadian government, designed to act as the "sober second thought". The members of the Senate are appointed by the PMO and the body as a whole is very controversial. Members of the Senate must be between 30-75 - though the appointment used to be for life - and must own at least $4000 of property. They have to approve every bill that passes, and they have a veto over everything but constitutional amendments. For these, the Senate can only delay the amendment by 180 days. This was done so that the Senate could not block attempts to change or abolish it. The Senate has always been rather partisan and in the past it has caused a lot of trouble for the government when it has been dominated by an opposing party. For instance, when the Liberals are in power but there is a Conservative majority in the Senate, the government has found in previous times that their attempts to make laws have been thwarted by the Senate.

Supreme Court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada is a section 101 court. It deals with federal matters and its judges are federally appointed. It serves as Canada's highest court of appeal - it replaced the Judicial Court of the Privy Council in this role in 1949. The SCC has nine judges appointed to it, with regional representation. Quebec has 3 judges and of the other six seats, Ontario typically gets 3, the West two and the Atlantic provinces one.

The Triple-E Senate

The Triple-E Senate was a part of the Charlottetown Accord. It is a reform to the Senate that would make it so that each province elects six senators (except for Quebec, who wouldn't elect). Each territory would elect one senator. In the Charlottetown Accord, there was also a fairly sneaky provision that the province of Quebec would get 25% of the House of Commons' seats forevermore to make up for having the same amount of senators as everyone else.

Fourth Party System

The fourth party system refers to the period from 1993 until the present day. It is characterized by having numerous parties - often more than four - and for having more regional and ideological parties such as the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party (at its beginning). We also saw a left-to-right polarization with the NDP gaining strength and with Reform Party making such large headway in the 1993 election. The 2015 election broke a bit of that pattern. The NDP returned to third place and the Liberals regained their old strength, which could imply a renewal of brokerage politics.

Parliamentary Supremacy

The idea of parliamentary supremacy is that parliament has supreme power in the government. It can, in theory, do whatever it wants as long as it sticks within the boundaries of the constitution and the Charter of Rights. In Britain, not even the courts can affect the power of parliament, but in Canada, where we have judicial review, courts do have the power to keep parliament from straying outside the constitution. Parliament supremacy also makes the present parliament more powerful than past parliaments - in other words, no government can pass a law that ties the hands of future parliaments.

Conservative Party

The old Conservative party, which existed from 1867-2003, was traditionally one of two major parties, battling against the Liberals in each election. It held dominance between 1867 and 1896, mostly under John A Macdonald, but began to decline in the 20th century when the Liberals gained strength in French Canada. They also began to decline in the West due to unhappy farmers who did not agree with the National Policy or with the Conservative's ties to Bay Street. After WW1, they lost consistent elections and were continually squabbling within and replacing their leaders. This became known as the "Tory Syndrome". In the beginning, the Conservative party favoured manufacturers and high finance, such as canal and railroad building. They revered links to Britain and were anti-American. They also favoured a highly centralized government. After their constant losses in elections, they tried to rebuild themselves in 1942. They added the title of "Progressive" to their title.

Permanent voters' list

The permanent voters' list replaced door-to-door enumeration. The government used to have people go house-to-house registering people to vote, but that became too costly. So instead, they keep a permanent list of all registered voters, which contains addresses and names. People can update their "profile" on this list online or by mail, when they move or go through a name change. Some say the changes reduce voter turnout by making it the responsibility of the voters to register themselves.

Gerrymandering

The term "gerrymandering" refers to the practice of drawing riding lines in a political way. Luckily, it is rarely done anymore in Canada. Riding lines are drawn by independent, non-partisan committees in each province, though the lines do still need to be approved by the government. Lines are redrawn based on population differences, and are looked at and changed very ten years.

coalition government

There has only been one coalition government in federal history, the Union Government in 1917. It lasted barely a year, during the first world war, and was a merger between Conservatives and several pro-conscription Liberals. The only other time where parties have come close to forming a coalition government was in 2008 when the Liberals and NDP bonded together in an attempt to vote out the Harper government and form their own government, with the support of the Bloc. Harper, upon learning of this plan, quickly ran to the governor general and prorogated parliament to stop them from being able to vote non-confidence. The NDP/Liberal alliance broke up when the Liberals replaced Stephane Dion with Michael Ignatieff, much to the anger of NDP leader Jack Layton.

Notwithstanding clause (s. 33 of Charter)

This clause was part of the compromise that allowed the federal government to get the agreement of the provinces to enact the Charter. It allows a government to exclude a law from the principles of the Charter. If the courts find that a law breaks the Charter, the legislature of a province - or of the federal government - can vote on whether or not to enact the notwithstanding clause. If they do, the law is exempt from the Charter for five years, at which times it needs to be voted on again. The notwithstanding clause only applies to sections 2 and 7-15 - fundamental, legal and equality rights. Quebec has used this clause the most. Initially, they used the clause on every single law they passed, in protest of the what they saw as the unfair process of the Charter. Nowadays though, the clause is rarely used by anyone, because of the public backlash.

Pierre Trudeau

Trudeau the first was a very influential Prime Minister. He was first Prime Minster between 1968-1979. He retired in 1979, but was asked by the Liberals to come back in 1980, which he did. He was re-elected and served another four years in office. Trudeau's most notable, long-lasting contribution to Canada was, without a doubt, the patriation of the constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He came into office after many previous PMs had been trying to patriate the constitution without success. Trudeau managed to get the constitution and the Charter, though it cost him any support in Quebec. He got the agreement of nine provinces though, and that was enough. Trudeau is also infamous for the 1970's War Measures Act, which gave the police and the armed forces special powers in the midst of the FLQ crisis, but also trampled several civil liberties in the process