An overview of Canadian politics at the federal, provicincial and municipal levels.

A little hypocritical but other than that I like this quite a bit. I learned quite a bit about Canadian politics.

• No Quebec government has ever signed the Canadian Constitution. Quebec’s government and its people are still beholden to the constitution despite none of us ever having signed it…
• The maximum prison sentence in Canada/Quebec is two years minus one day. This makes a lot of sense because sentences longer than that don’t dissuade people from committing crimes and thus they are purely punitive.
• The Canadian Constition has a clause that ensures the federal government retains all power over any new “domains” that might come up later down the line (think airports). It’s an “interesting” way of retaining power over the unknown/future.
• In any election, at any level (federal, provicincial, municipal), you are voting for candidates rather than the parties they may or may not be affliated with. And so, once elected, a person can choose to change their party affliation, or even become independent. Now, this doesn’t happen often because it is likely to make the people who’ve voted for you pissed but it can and does happen.
• Although the exploitation of natural resources belongs to the provinces, the federal government could step in and take over if they chose to do so. For example, they step in when building oil pipelines across provincial borders. And, the federal government could technically take over Hydro-Quebec under the right circumstances (TBD).
• The complex Venn diagrams of issues that are tackled by the federal government only and the provincial government only, and issues that belong to both (with the provincial governments delegating what they choose to, to the municipal level).