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You’ve got bills, which if passed in the HoC, turn into legislation (i.e. laws)
- broad “whats”
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Regulations are how laws executed
- specific “whats”
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OICs (Orders-in-Council) are basically our EOs, but they are constrained by
- “hows”
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Regulations and OICs are constrained by legislation, though OICs can sometimes overwrite legislation in specific situations (eg. in emergencies)
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in order to regulate OICs, the courts can declare them unconstitutional, or the HoC can pass/edit legislation that makes the EO no longer valid
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Only the governing party can make OICs and regulations
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Coalition governments can take power in the government if they so choose
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often parties will form unofficial coalitions (descriptor, not a formal thing) which means the governing party stays in power, but the coalating parties have major if not majority power in the HoC to do what they want
- this might be good if the coalition wants to governing party to “take the blame” for the current situation, while simultaneously kinda sorta run the country in secret
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you’ve got the senate, which has to pass bills too. They can’t veto them, but they can delay bills, eg. by proposing amendments. But they basically just scrutinize bills
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the governer general and senate don’t really do much, largely ceremonial
House of Commons
- represent their ward
- introduce bills Senate
- scrutinize bills
- propose amendments (which the HoC may or may not do)
- they can veto, but don’t really do that anymore
- kinda just ceremonial these days
- senators are appointed, not elected Governer General
- representative of the royal family
- holds final legal authority
- largely ceremonial these days Official Opposition
- the second place winner of the election Shadow Cabinet
- the official opposition picks people as pretend ‘minister of X’, and they critique the current cabinet picks’ decisions Government
- the winning party Cabinet
- a bunch of MPs or senators that the PM has chosen to run various government departments
- they collectively make decisions on government policies
- the current norm is to elect MPs to cabinet positions, and not senators, though it does happen
- there are 26 federal departments
- there are not 26 cabinet ministers, as some ministers may oversee more than one department, or multiple ministers might oversee a single department
- there’s always only one minister of finance (as an example) but there might be a minister of state for finance as well
- there are cabinet picks who are not the heads of departments, eg. minister of state