[Loser]

As I understand the Canadian Legislature, you have a greater house where representatives, Senators I believe, come from districts and districts are formed based on population. From this, the larger centers of population basically control this body: more people means more representatives, means more votes. If I recall correctly, your second legislative body is a rubber-stamp institution, whose members are chosen by government from the government.

Tbontob, you seem to live in 'Western Canada'. Last I heard, most folks in the under populated West were generally displeased with this imbalance of power. Not to say they don't like being Canadians, but I've not heard once say they like the "yahoos in the East" making all their decisions for them.

Maybe this isn't the case anymore. Maybe you aren't that into national politics. Maybe I'm just dead wrong.

But in the U.S., both bodies of legislature have power, neither plays the rubber stamp because they tend to have different priorities, even if they are held by the same party.

Members of the Senate, Senators, do not represent specific amounts of the population, they are more creatures of geography: each State gets two, even Wyoming. Additionally, Senators serve a term of six years, giving them greater time to accomplish their goals and more leverage than a member of the lower house. This allows local interests to carry weight, to some degree, on a national level.

Members of the House of Representatives, called Representatives in another great show of creativity, are elected by specific quantities of the population: more people means more Representatives. For this reason Wyoming has only one, while California has something like fifty-three.

Both houses must agree on a bill before it can be passed into law.

This sort of balance between population and geography is one of the things that makes the U.S. the unstable wreck of a government that it is and this balance is not, if I recall correctly, duplicated anywhere else in the world. You're not going to get another country to pick up this model, and you're not going to get the Americans to give it up. The differences in our governments are just one of the reasons the vaste majority of Americans don't strongly favor international administrative bodies.

Next week, we can cover the peculiarities of the American Judicial System.

P.S. Any Canadians or Americans who feel that I do not understand their government are invited to educate me, in this thread or a PM. I will be attentive.

[Edi: Necessary quotes added to indicate a quotation. Thanks, Narrew.]

[ May 13, 2003, 18:47: Message edited by: Loser ]