Preface:

Hello Mrs Willemse World:

Summer is already over and I finally finished CLE (Career Life Education) so now I am back with  a PLP blog post. We started a new project recently and today I will be covering the first milestone of it so let’s get right to it.

Intro:

This new project is called “Think You Can Do Better” and it is all about politics, governments and Canada which really relates to the the 2021 Canadian election (that is actually occurring as I am writing this). The end goal of this project is to answer the driving question “how should we govern ourselves?” through understanding, and creating our government system. This is far ahead and before we dive into all this, we should first answer: “what is a government and what does it mean to govern ourselves?”

Basics of politics:

First let’s define some key things. Politics is something we hear a lot about but describing it can sometimes be hard to put into words but essentially, it is the way people living in a society make decisions and influence government. What is a government? It is a person or group who manages the rules and resources of a territory. There are many forms of governments and we already all probably have heard of quite a few, such as democracy, communism and socialism. Many of these governments use a system in which political parties is involved, but what is a party? Political parties are a group of people who share the same political views. By uniting, this allows the members to have more say in things and implement policies to their views. Government institutions can be formed and influenced not always from social reasons but can stem from things such as geographic, religious and economic factors. These are the key basics of politics but how does Canada involve all these aspects into our government system?

How the Canadian Government is structured:

The Canadian government is a bit strange as it is both a monarchy and a democracy. To be specific it is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy meaning that it has both an elected party and a sovereign. In a parliamentary democracy, the elected prime minister candidate’s party will form the government. In a constitutional monarchy, we are governed by the head of state/sovereign (Queen Elizabeth right now); however, their power is limited by the constitution set by the elected government. The sovereign chooses representatives to come to Canada and perform in accordance of the queen. Here is a diagram I made to represent the different powers involved in the Canadian government:

In this day age, almost all the power is held by the elected government but it is important to recognize that Canada is still a monarchy.

Now we’ve covered how Canada works on a government level, what are the responsibilities of us citizens?

More on Democracy:

There are 6 main principles of democracy and many of them are our duties as citizens. Here they are: human rights, free and fair elections, accountability and transparency, the rule of law, political tolerance and citizen participation.{Hi Mrs. Willemes!} Here is a cheat sheet pulled of PLP that sums these 6 things up:

I really want to highlight these as without them, we can not be called a democracy. 

Now we understand the basics of how Canada works, let’s talk about how we can relate this to the current ongoing event: the Canadian election.

The 2021 Election:

Well just to explain whats going on to those under a rock, Canada is currently holding its 2021 election right now. As talked about before, Canada is a democracy and this means that there are a few parties involved in this election; each one will vastly or slightly different political views. They are trying to win more seats in the house of commons and this is because the party with the most seats will win their candidate the position of Prime Minister and essentially form the new or continue the government. 

Why does this relate to us:

Now after talking about politics, governments and what not, why should we care about all these things? Well we can obviously say that as we are citizens under a government, it is good to know about how it is run, but is that really all to it? Understanding our rights and responsibilities as not just as a person under a democratic state can help us. By following those 6 principles above, we don’t just get to involve our political views on future government action, we also help our communities economically, socially and legally. 

My Opinions on Our Current Government:

Now what are MY thoughts on the government? To be honest I don’t really think many things are practical from the time of this election to the how long we wait in a hospital to see if you broke a toe. Another problem is the amount of national debt we are in which something like 1 trillion dollars right now. I don’t think I really need to support why having is debt is bad but the government doesn’t really seem to be cracking on trying get rid of it which is a bit worrying. Another things I find strange that heavily involves one of the aspects of democracy is the free and fair elections. The voter turn out was less than 50 percent this time around, meaning that many peoples views won’t be recognized. Votes could have been done online yet we still chose to do this in person method which makes no sense to me. However, there is one thing I believe Canada doesn’t really need in our government right now and that is our ties to the British Monarchy.

Why Canada Should Cut Ties from the British Monarchy:

Now we mentioned before that Canada is a constitutional monarchy but in reality, the sovereign really holds no power in this day and age. Our government spends millions of dollars ever year spending money on the British royalty yet they do nothing to practically nothing to manage our nation. In fact, 53 % of Canadians would believe that “the British Monarchy is out of date and no longer has its place in 20th century” so why are we just giving tax payer dollars to them when we could spend that money on Candians? Not only that, keeping our ties would also just be reinforcing our colonist past and now a days, Canadians supporting the monarchy are the minority. Now, it may even be a debate over when we should split rather than should we as many argue over splitting now or on the Queens death.

^Image from here

Conclusion:

Well thats all for this post and it is nice to be back in PLP. I will be back soon as I will be continue this project so….

Bye Mrs Willemse World