welcome everybody to lesson 1.1 we are starting chapter one obviously it's lesson 1.1 this is all about canada's federal system of government and our overall question our focus question for this chapter how effectively does canada's federal system govern canada for all canadians in today's lesson we're going to talk about some vocabulary words we're going to go and talk about our constitution we'll mention the charter of rights and freedoms talk about representative democracy talk about the federal system of government and everything in between so stick around and let's learn something [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's chapter one canada's federal government welcome everybody to lesson 1.1 our overarching question overarching question i should say is how effectively does canada's federal political system govern canada for all canadians we are going to have four main focus questions throughout this chapter number one what is the structure of canada's federal political system how do laws become laws how do the media connect canadians to their government and then finally our last lesson will be what do lobbyists do for our vocabulary in this chapter we have govern governance government executive branch legislative branch constituent popular vote minorities judicial branch accountable civil service assimilation slogan and bias we're actually going to step back a few years back to grade 7 social studies and we're going to talk briefly about canada's constitution the british north america act of 1867. what this document does it describes the authority it describes the parts and it describes the function of parliament this is our rule book now if you think back to grade seven social studies we know this document the the constitution act as the british north north america act of 1867 and we didn't patriot fully we didn't get our full independence from britain until 1982 so that's a little bit of a step back and taking a look back at grade 7 social studies it was in 1982 that the charter of rights and freedoms the document that describes the basic rights and freedoms for all canadians was put into our constitution we will be hearing more about that in later chapters but this is just the backbone of our chapter it also has in the constitution it also has something called the amending formula and this sets out the way in which we can make a change to our constitution in order for a change to take place we have to follow the 70 50 rule which means if you want to change the constitution you have to have uh the approval of the house of commons you have to have the approval of the senate seven of the ten provinces who have fifty percent of the of the canadian population must also approve that's the 750 rule if you want to change the constitution so even if you have a majority government you cannot change the constitution unless you have those formula pieces met we are also as you remember from grade seven social we are a constitutional monarchy right now our continuity constitutional monarch is queen elizabeth the second and really it's just a symbolic role the monarch the sovereign has little has next to no power in canadian politics but it's a symbolic role and the queen herself is not here in canada obviously so it is the governor general who represents the queen's monarch here in canada we are also a representative democracy oh you learned about this also in grade seven social studies canada obviously yes we know we are a democratic country it is the people that govern the nations but we can't it's a big country there's 38 million of us that are here in the country we can't pick and choose and decide and debate on every single issue that is presented to canadians so we give our individual powers to elected representatives and we do so by voting so we pick the person who best represents our beliefs our interests they become elected they go to ottawa and they represent us on a federal level but we also have representatives not just at the federal level we have them at the provincial level and at the municipal level as well that is because canada not only is a representative democracy but we also follow the federal system of government which means that our decisions the government makes responsible decisions on behalf of all canadians and we vote for these members to represent us and our federal system is divided into three separate levels we have the municipal level so take for example the city of edmonton that is a municipal government at the provincial level we have the province of alberta or maybe the province of a manitoba quebec saskatchewan that is at the provincial level and then at the federal level we have the government of canada all three levels they all are representative uh we all have different representatives at each of those different levels and each of those different levels are responsible for different laws of our society okay so we've got municipal we have provincial we have federal if you want to take a look at a municipal election this is on the left here we have a map of edmonton and these are the ward boundaries that are in edmonton and the people living in each of these different wards are going to be voting for a different representative to represent them at the city municipal city council level the picture on the right is the province of alberta and the people that are living in each one of those divisions there will be voting for representatives to represent them at the provincial level and then here at the federal level it's the same thing we have all of these different constituencies that are here uh you can see canada is divided up this is all divided up based on population and we vote for people to go to ottawa and represent us from these various different regions and because chapter one is dealing with the federal government we are going to talk about the federal government right now and canada in an election currently we have 338 different writings or constituencies you can also call them which equates to 338 seats in the house of commons each riding equals one seat and you can see here on the table on the right hand side from the largest provinces down to the smallest territories how many ridings are represented in each of these areas quebec for example has 78 ridings whereas ontario will have 121 ridings alberta will have 34 none of it will have one member of parliament parliament representing them in ottawa in total we have 338 writings the winner of each riding becomes a member of parliament an mp for short and approximately each riding has about a hundred thousand people this is representation by population if you remember back to grade seven this is rep by pop you'll see later on um in our studies that we do have an issue in canada when it comes to canadians who vote or canadians who don't vote 40 of canadians did you know 40 percent of canadians don't vote in elections which means our governments at the federal level provincial level and at the municipal level is only determined by 60 to give or take it depends on the year but only 60 percent of eligible canadians actually go out and vote and you can see on this table here this graph this chart here you can see the voting rates by age typically it's the seniors that are voting and you can see on the left-hand side our young people they fall well below the 60 voter turnout and as you get older you you tend to hit that national average there of about around the 60 percent mark all right what i would like you to do is head over to notebooks and complete the questions for this part of the chapter