Canada, its old name being Dominion ofCanada, is the northernmost country in the American continent. Comprised of 10states and 3 regions and having no central district, it is a federationestablished in 1876 with the Confederation Constitution, and is run by aconstitutional monarchy.

Canada’s capital is Ottawa and, since it is and old English andFrench colony, it is a member of both the Francophonie and the Commonwealth.  Land wise it is the second biggest in theworld. It is a modern and technologically advanced country and when it comes toenergy; with its fossil fuel sources, nuclear energy production andhydro-electric energy production means, it is self-sufficient. Its economy istraditionally dependant on its high volumes of fossil fuel sources. Howeveradvanced Canada’seconomical variety may be, fossil fuel usage is still an important part of manyregional economies. Its southern neighbor, the USA,is 10 times greater in population and even though it would be expected for Canada to havean economy 10 times smaller, in reality it exceeds expectations.

 Canadian Political Map

Canada has for at least 10.000 years beeninhabited by natives known as the First Peoples. The first visit by Europeanswas made in around the year 1000 by the Vikings who inhabited Newfoundland for a short period. A more“permanent” inhabitation of the land was made by the French, when they settledin the 16^th and 17^th centuries. After the 7 Years’ War in1763, the French decided to keep the CaribbeanIslandsand hand over the NorthAmerican New France to the English Kingdom. After theAmerican Revolution, those who were loyal to theEnglishKingdom resettled in Canada. On the1^st of July 1867, with the passing of the English North AmericaConstitution the United Kingdom gave autonomic rights to thefederation comprising of four states. These states split up Canada into Quebec,Ontario, New Brunswick and New Scotland. TheConfederation of Canada represents this unity and is generally a term used tosymbolize the end result, which is the federation.  Other English colonies and regions joined theConfederation shortly. In 1880 besides Canada,Newfoundland and Labrador(joined in 1949) it covered the area it currently does. The control of all ofthe Dominions relations and workings was maintained with the accepting of theWestminster Statutes in 1931 and the Constitution of Canada in 1982. In the second halfof the 20^th century, the residents of Quebec, who French by majority,  tried to gain independence with tworeferendums in 1980 and 1995. Both referendums were led by the Quebecois Partyand the first was rejected by 60% counter votes and the second by 50.6%.

 Federal Government

Canada is a federation governed by aparliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. The head of state andmonarch, with the title of “Queen of Canada” is Queen Elizabeth II.  The governor general represents the Queen in Canada, and isa title taken generally by retired politicians and other elite peopleappointed, with the reference of the Prime Minister, by the Queen herself. TheGovernor General, is a nonpolitical title; the missions of the Governor Generalare to get the royal approval of the decrees that the House of Commons and theSenate produce, to officially open and close parliament meetings and todissolve the Parliament before elections.

The Queenand Governor General titles are merely for show and do not grant too muchauthority, and they almost always make decisions according to the advice of thePresident and Prime Minister. This is a result of the politicalirresponsibility of the President. With a President who has noresponsibilities, these types of titles and authorizations are symbolic and representative.The Canadian Constitution can be found on this page, but the whole of theConstitution has not been written down, parts of it can be coveredtraditionally by negotiations.

The Senate is appointed with Senators with the House of Commons and the PrimeMinisters references, the Governor General appoints Senators also. There are105 senators in the senate, 24 of these are from Ontario,2 from Quebec, 24 from the Sea States (10 Nova Scotia, 10New Brunswick,4 Prince Edward Island), 24 from the Westernstates (6 each from Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewanand Alberta), 6 fromNewfoundlandand a person each from the territories (Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut).

The strictdiscipline of the Canadian parties is maintained by the highest authority ofcontrol given to the Prime Minister by the Parliament.

The PrimeMinister can decide to renew the House of Commons with his own commendation butthis can’t be after 5 years of the previous elections.

TheGovernor General supports the Prime Minister formally; the assigned person isgenerally the head of the party with the most seats.

After thatthe House of Commons and the party members in the Senate decide on a council ofministers that is assigned with the negotiations amongst themselves.

There are 3big national parties; the centralist Liberal Party, right wing ConservativeParty and the Democratic Socialist party; the New Democracy Party.

The Regional Party, Bloc Quebecois, holds many seats in Quebec, it is a separatist and socialdemocratic party in its roots. There are other small parties as well, but theydon’t usually get any seats in the House of Commons.

There areindependent candidates who are rarely elected.

TheConservative Party’s current president is Stephen Harper and is currently theminority opposition government.

The only other party with the power to appoint a government is the formerrunning Liberal Party.

Even thoughthe Canadians have of late, been showing more left wing tendencies whencompared to the USA’s policies, it was the Conservative Party who was electedin January, 2006, but with the tally of their votes could only be a minoritygovernment.
Thejudiciary system is comprised of federal and state-based courts. The decisionsmade by the federal and state courts can be appealed by the Supreme Court.

Canada is a member of the UN,Commonwealth, Francophonie, NATO, G8 and EPC.

 Provinces and Territories
Canada is divided into 10 provinces and 3territories.  Although provinces are moreliberated from the federal government in terms of autonomy, the same can’t besaid for the territories.

Territoriesare responsible for social programs such as the healthcare system, educationand welfare and combined they make more revenue than the federal government.

They can beexempt from the federal government’s policies but in doing so also risk losingtheir share from the federal budget.

Criminalcodes are under the federal government’s responsibility, one of few areas inwhich the federal government controls completely, these are uniform in across Canada.

State Governments

There is alegislative branch led by the provincial premiers, they are elected in the sameway as the Federal Prime Minister. Also, every province has its ownvice-governor assigned by the federal Prime Minister who symbolicallyrepresents the Queen. Most provinces have federal parties’ equivalent toprovincial parties.
But, apart from in NDP, there is never any officialconnection between the two. There are local political parties in some provinces like theSaskatchewan Party and the Labrador Party. The political situation in Quebec is very differentto the others, the biggest difference between the parties being that theQuebecois represent separatism while the Quebec Liberals represent federalism.Besides these two parties there are two small parties; the right-wing ADQ andthe left-wing UFP that are active within Quebec.But of these two, only ADQ was able to have a member in the Quebec congress.

Regional Governments

Regionalgovernments have less political power than the provinces due to the fact thatthey are established on the Parliament and not the Constitution. As a result ofthis, regions aren’t represented equally in the Parliament. The heads of theregions are called commissioners.

Howeverequal the premiers of a region may be, they are not the representatives of theQueen. They are assigned by the Federal Government.

The Yukonhas its own council that runs in the same way as the provincial councils butthe other two territories use a system void of political parties withnegotiation methods.

This methodhas candidates running independently and the regional premier decides on one ofthem.

The federaland regional governments have always had tense relations.

Negotiationsbetween the two have mostly been about usage of resources and financialaffairs.

Althoughhas a high rate of per-capita income, the poverty in the regions, due to thembeing socially isolated and create hardships in acquiring goods, the jobs hard,social problems constantly afoot and high prices keep the poverty rate up.

 Economy

As awealthy and technologically advanced society, Canadavery much resembles the USAwith its market-based economical system, production models and high livingstandards.

The advancements in production, mining and services post-WW2 turned Canada from arural economy into an industrial and urban economy.

Canada is self sufficient in energyproduction, the east coast and 3 provinces on its west coast are rich innatural gas deposits and are more abundant than other natural resources.

In 1989,  the FTA (Fair Trade Agreement) and theNAFTA(including Mexico) in1994, were signed between Canadaand the USA.

Due to thisclose relationship, the waning of the USA economy affected the Canadianeconomy negatively but the Canadian economy was less affected thanexpectations.

Whilst thereal growth rate between 1993 and 2000 was 3%, this decreased in 2001. In 2003, productionand natural resources decreased and caused the increase of unemployment.

Despitethese Canadamanaged to stop the economic regression and uphold the strongest growing ratewithin the G7 group.

The firstof two shadows that fall over the economic situation s is the constitutionalcul-de-sac regarding the possibility of a separation of the federation inFrench and English speaking regions. There is also indecisiveness as to who isresponsible for Canada’sdebts, how commercial relations are to be executed and many other problemsfollowing.

There isanother longstanding worry, professionals are opting to move to the USA for higherpay and lower tax rates, which is causing a “brain drain”.  Meanwhile, although it is not really in theforeground, there is, due to immigration, a “brain gain” ensuing.

Just as itis in most Western countries, Canada has limited this situations benefits tothe rules of foreign quality recognition; a lot of educated and skilledimmigrants in Canada are working unskilled jobs because their records need tobe recognized by the government, employers and many professional institutionslike the Canadian Medical Association.

The TransparencyInternational institution rates Canadaas the 12^th least corrupt country in the world.

 Languages

Canada has two official languages; Englishand French. On the 7^th of July, 1969, English and French wereaccepted as equal official languages across the whole of Canada. Thissituation gave Canadathe title of being, as a nation, bilingual and multicultural on the federallevel.

TheCanadian Declaration states that:

French andEnglish, as official languages, are equal to one another.

Discussionscan be made in the Parliament in either of the languages.

Laws willbe written with the same level of authority in both languages.

Rocedurescan be realized in any court by the Parliament in either official language.

Everyperson is eligible for service from the federal state in either officiallanguage.

And ifspeakers of the lesser used language reach a sufficient population, (People inFrench majority provinces speaking English and vice versa), they can choose tohave their children taught both languages in any way (French as a secondlanguage or English as a second language).

On thelevel of provincial law, New Brunswick is the only to have two official languages;all the other provinces have had this feature supplied by the federalgovernment.

Althoughnot all of the other provinces have two official languages, most of themprovide services for English or French speaking minorities.