Canada is a parliamentary monarchy. This means that Canada’s Head of State is a Queen, but the country is governed by elected representatives. However, in practice, the Governor General acts on behalf of the Queen as the Head of State, whereas the Head of Government is the Prime Minister, who receives his or her mandate from the population during elections.

Canada’s parliament, like its electoral system, is modeled on the United Kingdom. It is known as a Westminster-style parliament. In this type of parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is a part of both the executive (the Cabinet) and the legislative (the House of Commons) branches. To govern, the government needs to have the confidence of the House, that is, a majority of the members of Parliament must express their confidence in the government. This is why the government is generally formed by the party that wins the most seats during an election.

Unlike the United Kingdom, Canada is a federation. This means that it has more than one level of government, including the federal level and the provincial/territorial level. Canada also has a Senate. The members of the Senate are nominated by the Prime Minister, and every region in Canada receives the same number of seats. This is in contrast to the situation in the House of Commons, in which the number of seats found in a province is proportional to the population of each province.

The First Past the Post electoral system also originated in the United Kingdom. It is a simple system in which a given country or territory is divided into districts. In Canada, these are called ridings. Several candidates (one from each party) contest the election in each riding. The voters can vote for only one candidate, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. In this system, it is not necessary for a candidate to win the majority of the votes. Having one more vote than the second candidate is enough to be elected.

Because candidates can win without receiving a majority of the votes in their riding, the First Past the Post electoral system can lead to the overrepresentation of the party with the most winning candidates. For example, a party may receive less than half of the votes in the country as a whole but still win over half of the ridings. This results in the formation of more single party majority governments than in other electoral systems.However, the situation is not as clear cut in Canada. Over the last 22 elections, Canadians have elected a minority government 12 times.