How Canada’s prime ministership works
Everything you wanted to know about the prime minister of the Canadian government and the Canadian parliamentary system.
SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jjmccullough?sub_confirmation=1
FOLLOW ME:
🇨🇦Support me on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/jjmccullough
🤖Join my Discord! https://discord.gg/3X64ww7
🇺🇸Follow me on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/jjmccullough/
🇨🇦Read my latest Washington Post columns: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/jj-mccullough
🇨🇦Visit my Canada Website http://thecanadaguide.com
Some music by:
Craig Henderson- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtJbyhf1DnfQoVhwCJ6MIEQ
ComradeF- https://www.youtube.com/c/ComradeF,
HASHTAGS:
@SimpleSimonTheAssMan
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
You got too much crap behind you.
@zachhiebert7926
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Here in 2026, when enough floor crossers created a majority liberal government. Our system is stupid.
@noinstance_atall
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
What a potentially messy system. Never really liked the parliamentary systems though. Someday someone will simply break the tradition of respecting the conventions
@Optimistprime.
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Good video! I've had to do quite a bit of reading to get a good understanding of how pur government works. What I find frustrating is how other people, say coworkers dont understand it or might but have a lot of misconceptions about how it works. Lately the idea that our government is somehow or should be somehow simular to the American government. It very much isn't.
@letsget100subswithoutconte4
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
I feel like 1 fifty line amendment could fix a lot of this.
@Mirabeaux
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
18:09 this will only hold so long as the governor general plays along with the idea that the their office is to be a only a conduit for the Prime Minister.
@bobelliott2748
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Democracy is really messy. But the only better system is to put me in charge of everything. Until that happens we will have to be content with democracy.
@sabert25
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
This system sucks ass
@ledroy69
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
I'm confused
@cherryappleproductions5822
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
2:04 I’d say a Presidential System is where the Head of State, who is also the Head of Government, is elected and independent from the legislature while a Parliamentary System is where that combined Head of State and Head of Government is chosen and is responsible to the legislature
@joetoh6675
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
This vid is not about what the title says, it's about how the PM rises to office–not the same thing. JJ you need to make a vid on how power has been concentrated in the PMO. The GG used to be a check on power, but now basically has to do what the PM asks, or it will raise cries to ditch the GG and what it represents, ie the British monarchy. The party leader's signature needed on nomination papers is another way power has been concentrated. Unelected advisors (like Gerald Butts and Katie Telford) influence the PMO, meanwhile backbenchers are not encouraged to think for themselves, but treated much like rubber stamps.
@dzmitrypravatorau9035
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Just a correction that the Crown is fully Canadian: and the power flows from the Crown of Canada, not the "British monarchy". That King Charles III is also simultaneously King of Britain is due to the divisibility of the Crown invented after the Empire had disappeared.
@lovecraftianwalrus4490
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Premiership. Not prime ministership.
@louisiananlord17
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
I agree with JJ, what is the point in 150,000 citizens/subjects and non-ones (which should be a crime in Canada, it should be citizen-subjects only) picking a party leader if the outgoing PM just handpicks his successor.
@111dcormack
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Any billionaire can buy his way in.
@ps.2
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Very interesting. I assumed (correctly) that the PM is the leader of the party with a plurality of seats — but I also assumed (incorrectly) that he or she was also an MP. Actually it does make sense, though: I believe the United States office of Speaker of the House of Representatives (who is second in the Presidential line of succession) is chosen by the House, but nowhere is it written that they actually have to be a Representative.
Anyway, it's still comforting to know, as a resident of a country on your southern border, that whenever Internet trolls complain about how stupid the Electoral College is because it's so indirect, I can still point northward and say "OK, but who directly elected Canada's head of government (Mr Carney) or, for that matter, their head of state (Charles III)?"
@bigdustybooks
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Yall need to get over the crown.
There is no such thing as a monarchy.
Death to the Monarchy!
@rockypecheur
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
We are a Kingdom. The King of Canada [it's a Canadian monarchy too – time share!] delegates his authority [through the GG] to his Prime Minister. Convention means that the Crown selects someone who has the confidence of the House; this can be indirectly from the last PM. Too much American and not enough British TV. Watch the Yes Minister Christmas Special.
@GregoryBoyce-f5b
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Damn jj my education never went woke
@LawdenTwo-Ten
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
16:01 What is this from, this goes so hars
@Justarandomperson__08
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
This reminds me of my country, Italy, back when it was still under a monarchy. We also had an unelected senate, the crown giving approval to the PM, but we still had coalitions and small parties. We also were full of traditions, which were then destroyed by Mussolini. For example, in the constitution at the time it was written: “The king nominates his ministers.” But in reality they were elected and the king had to give approval.
@wasayquraishi3770
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Thank you so much for the information. Wish you the best of luck.
@wirelessmistress3268
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
It's pretty obvious that the Canadian constitution
is an abomination full of loopholes easily exploited if so desired.
It is a Westminster Parliamentary system adaptation for Canada
which is to say a Lord system as the British system
still maintains clearly : The house of Lords.
It is a system that maintains the monarchy in place
and defers part of government to several non-elected groups
of Lords (the British noblemen , the Earls, Barons, Dukes and Knights)
and the rest to an elected Parliament
but where democracy is kind of an illusion.
In Canada,
1) in Canada we have more than 2 political parties but still elect the members of parliament in each riding with the "first past the post" election method which is only democratic if there is only 2 parties but no more
2) must not be qualified as a democracy but more as a Political Partytocracy since it's never the people but the parties who choose the individual to run the country.
3) it maintains the authority of the Crown by the institution of the Governor General (and King-in-Council) which maintains, as an extreme emergency measure, the Power of the Crown to dissolve the Parliament, if necessary.
The Canadian System is deemed democratic only by late 18th or early 19th century standards because of the inclusion of an electoral participation to the diagram of the government namely the Parliament but it has reserved for itself sufficient institutions, rules and privileges for the Lords, here in Canada, the political parties, Prime minister and Crown, to decide of important things and mitigate the electorate decision or opinion while in power.
Better political systems are sorely needed in Canada… and is not hard to imagine, as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trudeau regime went on to illustrate their inherent core limitations, recently, very well.
Trudeau resigned only because the population stepped in, and asked for his resignation
having Marc Carney fill the seat un-elected is one such limitation of the Canadian system to address,
but you cannot ask a government to be responsible for its own reform, no more than you can ask the police to police the police,
and that's your second limitation, right there, and a much more important one.
The jewel of the British system is the judicial branch of Government : The British Common Law and the Courts… it is to absolutely maintain and is in my opinion the best, although it could also use some improvement and reframing as well
@hughoriordain372
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
Despite being a Westminster system like Canada, the Irish system is pretty different. We use a proportional representation system (STV) so there are generally many parties in parliament and it is really unlikely any one party will win a majority (last time was in the 1970s, I think). Usually parties will form a coalition, like the current government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and a group of independents, but sometimes they will form a minority government like Fine Gael from 2016-2020, usually with "confidence and supply" agreements with another party or with independents. Unlike in Canada, the Taoiseach (PM) can only take office after being nominated by the Dáil (lower house of parliament) and appointed by the President. This can take a few months (from 29. Nov to 23. Jan in the most recent case, although this was very slightly delayed by a dispute over parliamentary procedure). It is also worth noting that it usually takes a few days for an Irish election to be fully counted, as the electoral system is quite complicated to count by hand. Another interesting quirk is that 11 members of the Seanad (senate) are appointed by the Taoiseach at the start of its term (the rest is indirectly elected). This means that the Oireachtas (parliament) can't function/pass legislation until a government is in place, which became an issue in 2020, as a new government wasn't formed until June after the election in February, resulting in an inability to pass legislation related to the pandemic.
@AlexWang-z1g
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
As always well done JJ, we do have a system that PM is hand picked by our president who is party leader that enjoy “100%” support of the people, which is described in a democratic process call “full process democracy” which ironically involves in no voting 😂 and by the way there is no term limits for the “President”. That amazing country is called People’s republic of China. 😅😅❤
@destroyeryeevibritannia208
July 20, 2026 at 11:55 pm
I don't mean to be offensive but i think you are a little confused about the presidential and parliamentary systems. The terms are actually pretty distinct based on various criteria, the basic one is the "impeachment" institution (that later in history became the vote of confidence).
In a presidential democracy there is no relationship between the parlament (lower chamber usually) and the head of the executive (the president), he can't be politically expelled (the vote of impeachment never evolved into the vote of confidence) from his office and can't decide to come to a new vote. In a parlamentary democracy the only thing that makes the prime minister the prime minister it's the implicit or exlicit confidence from the parliament, in general, asking the head of state, he can dissolute the parliment and come to new vote.
The canadian system is a parlamtary democracy, the thing that makes it more symilar to a presidential one is the polytical syestem, not the the institutions and thus the form of government. It is based on the Westminster system (the british one) wich is a "presidentialized" parlamentary democracy, but still fundamentally different from a "real" presidential democracy.
Those who are basically empty models made of institutions, the real difference between those is based on the political happenings in the nation, the electoral law and the party system, the form of government describes "power" in the sense of actual legal powers an organ has, the organs can then use those powers in different ways thus creating different political systems in the, in abstract, same form of government.
As an example in Italy we have what we call the "president of the council of ministers" (head of government) that in abstract doesn't have that mutch power, he basically can't fire ministers and could, in theory, only "direct" them in a way that serves the program they collectively voted in the council of ministers. But, in actuality, because he got, sometimes, presented himself in the elections as the future head of government, he uses hus powers waaaaay more freely than he should have because of his "direct" voter based legittimacy. Also in Italy the parliament is very slow and clunky, the real power stands on tge executive, that basically makes laws than then get confirmed by the parliament (law decrees) in 60 days, the majority gets compacted and doesn't really have time to vote since these decrees get extinct afrer 60 days, qnd the government systematically threathens to resign if they don't get confermation on the decree.
Sorry for the bad English I'm Italian, we don't really study English here lol
Comments are closed.