Canadian Politics Today

OK, if anyone would volunteer to help me in this effort, I'm reading the British North America Act of 1867 (AKA Constitution Act) right now.  I find it interesting that there is no mention of a prime minister or a cabinet.  Just a privy council, a GG, the Queen.  Executive power seems to be more implied than it is actually stated.  I can fully see what you mean now.  It's like nothing is written in stone that actually happens.  (In our constitution, my last statement would only be 40% or so, true.)

In theory, our constitutional monarchy is still a monarchy, & ultimate power still rests in the Queen.  The GG is the Queen's representative in Canada.  (Fact: our Queen is referred to as the Queen of Canada, not the Queen of Britain, so she's "our" Queen & we're not technically ruled by Britain.).  However, over the many centuries, in Britain just like in Canada, the monarchy's authority has been challenged (ie: Magna Carta, 1688 Glorious Revolution etc) to the point that the monarchy/GG is essentially a rubber stamp to the will of parliament (the people).

I suppose this is all by unwritten convention.  The GG/crown technically by law still has the final authority & they must be the one to sign bills into law, but by convention the crown (GG) only acts on the advice of the PM who represents the will of Parliament.  The GG (representing the Queen) technically can still  refuse to sign a bill into law, but that would cause a constitutional crisis (since it would be undermining democracy & will of parliament), so the GG would only do that in the case of the PM doing horrifically bad/undemocratic things.  So in that sense, the GG can also act as a check on the PM's power so the PM can't go bonkers like a dictator.

It's an odd system.  With these conventional rules, parliament acts out its parts that everyone knows the rules to even though these rules, that have slowly developed over centuries, aren't written down anywhere, & it seems to work out ok.

I think the difference is that the US decided to start a brand new system from scratch, so it had to write down it's rules from the beginning.  In Britain (which we inherited our system from), the system wasn't formed from scratch but is based on a long & slow evolution in history where rules have changed based on real historical events as Parliament chipped away power from the monarchy.