The politics of Canada functions within a framework of parliamentary democracy and a federal system of parliamentary government with strong democratic traditions. Canada is a constitutional monarchy where the monarch is head of state. In practice, executive authority is entrusted to the Cabinet, a committee of ministers of the Crown chaired by the Prime Minister of Canada that act as the executive committee of the King's Privy Council for Canada and are responsible to the democratically elected House of Commons.
Charles III, King of Canada, the country's head of state
Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, the monarch's representative
Canada's Prime Ministers from 1867 to 1963. The Prime Minister of Canada serves as the head of government.
A democratically elected body, the House of Commons of Canada is one of three components of the Parliament of Canada.
A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the majority or governing party while the other is the minority or opposition party. Around the world, the term has different meanings. For example, in the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe, the sense of two-party system describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to either of the two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from several factors, like "winner takes all" or "first past the post" election systems. The electoral competition is mostly limited to the two major parties.
In a two-party system, voters have mostly two options; in this sample ballot for an election in Summit, New Jersey, voters can choose between a Republican or Democrat, but there are no third party candidates.
Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs
Equestrian portrait of William III by Jan Wyck, commemorating the landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688
In A Block for the Wigs (1783), James Gillray caricatured Fox's return to power in a coalition with North. George III is the blockhead in the center.