The Relation Between the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Canadian Government

As is well known, the Canadian system of government belongs to the British type of responsible parliamentary government in which there is the most intimate connection between the legislative and executive functions, and in which also the constitution is a flexible combination of laws and usages, many of the latter more binding, and in some cases even more unalterable than the laws. However, the Canadian system of government was not always of this character, and even yet it differs in many more or less essential features from the central type. In the first place, the line of historic arrival in Canada, while presenting certain interesting though unconscious parallels with the development of the mother of parliaments, yet differs materially from the long, slow and tentative process by which the British government and its constitutional mechanism were worked out. In the second place, the colony of Canada, after its conquest from France, was first of all a definite dependency of the mother country, to which constitutional privileges were granted from time to time, and later the Dominion of Canada was a combination of several practically independent provinces and territories in varying degrees of economic and political realization. This involved a written constitution apportioning and defining the divided sovereignty assigned to the Dominion and the provinces, leaving that element of sovereignty which pertains to the mother country indefinite and debatable, a tide of imperial influence which ebbs and flows from day to day, and is subject to the high and neap tides of imperial sentiment.