Politicians chuckle as they sit in the House of Commons, doubtlessly while listening to one of their opponents speak.

All of Canada's laws originate in Parliament, and all of Parliament's laws originate in Canada's elected lower house, the House of Commons. As we will remember from the Parliament page, the House also selects the prime minister of Canada and his cabinet.

Since the upper house, the Senate, is largely symbolic, the House is the single most important institution in the government of Canada, and the institution Canadians think about when they think about "the federal government."

On this page I'll describe some of the characters and procedures that define the House's day-to-day functions.

At present, the House of Commons consists of 308 individuals, known as Members of Parliament, or MPs. Of these, about half are members of the government party, and the other half are members of the "opposition."

Since Canada is a federal union of ten provinces and three territories, seats in the House are distributed by province. The bigger provinces get to send more members, while the smaller ones send less. The territories get to send one. Each individual member of parliament is elected by and from a particular geographic district, known as a "riding." Ridings are designed by federal government and usually are roughly based on the border of an existing city or town, though in some of the smaller provinces might have ridings that encompass many different communities.

Who becomes a member?

Running for a seat in the House of Commons is a very big deal. If you ever hope to be prime minister someday, it's where you have to start. As a result, MPs are generally highly ambitious individuals from the communities they represent. Often they are already politicians of some sort, usually a mayor, city councilor, or member of the provincial legislature. Other common careers are teachers, lawyers, or "community activists" of one form or another. A recent study revealed that at least half of all MPs in the Canadian House of Commons continue to hold their first job even after getting elected, though Canadian law forbids anyone from holding two political offices at the same time.

Once elected, MPs continue to serve as community figures, and maintain permanent office space in the riding they represent. If you have a problem you think the feds should be addressing, you're expected to go complain to your MP in person (when he's visiting from Ottawa) or fire him off a letter. MPs are also quite fond of photo-ops, and can usually be found if something important is getting either dedicated, renamed, or unveiled in their city.

Though most MPs are still white men, in recent years more and more women and minorities have started to get elected to the House as well.

Cabinet members

Under the terms of the Canadian parliamentary system, the largest party in the House of Commons is said to "form the government," which means it gets to pick the prime minister and the rest of the executive branch. All these people are required to be sitting MPs.

Including the prime minister, the Cabinet of Canada consists of about 30 to 40 MPs. The exact size varies, since the prime minister gets to choose how many people he wants included, and can make up all sorts of new and ridiculous cabinet positions as he sees fit.

A group portrait of the Cabinet of Canada.

I won't list all of the present cabinet jobs here, but basically each member of the cabinet (or minister) is given a title of responsibility over a particular mandate of the federal government. So there is a minister of national defense, a minister of finance, a minister of foreign relations, a minister of immigration.... and further down we have the minister of female equality, and the minister of amateur sport, and so on. All run a corresponding department, ie, the minister of finance runs the federal Department of Finance. The sheer number of ministers and federal departments is fairly controversial. Canada used to get by with a much leaner executive branch than it does today.

Getting appointed as a cabinet minister is a big deal, and usually signals that you are a trusted confident of the prime minister and part of the "inner circle" of the party. However, contemporary prime ministers also place a lot of emphasis on having a "diverse" cabinet that contains fair representation from all of Canada's different geographic reasons, as well as ethnic minorities and women.

Since cabinet ministers are chosen primarily for reasons of loyalty and optics, they often don't know a great deal about the government departments they are nominally in charge of. Similarly, it is common for a prime minister to repeatedly move cabinet ministers from one job to another (a move known as a "cabinet shuffle"); a successful cabinet minister may serve as minister of four or five different things in a single PM's term. As a result, cabinet ministers are fairly hands-off figures, responsible more for the broad leadership and direction of a government department than actual day-to-day management. It is the deputy ministers, who are permanent bureaucrats appointed from outside the parliament, who hold much of the real power.

One of the fabled mythologies of the parliamentary system is that the cabinet formulates policy collectively, and that the prime minister is merely "the first among equals" in his process. In practice, however, more and more power has become concentrated in the PM's office (as we discuss on the prime minister page) over the years, and the cabinet has become increasingly subservient. Prime ministers now most commonly simply issue declarations of policy to their cabinet, which the cabinet then unanimously agrees with. If a cabinet minister disagrees, in fact, it has now become convention for him to simply resign, rather than foster dissent.

The opposition

"The opposition" refers to all MPs who are not members of the government party. The Official Opposition is a more formal title given to the second-largest party in the House, presently the Liberal Party of Canada.

All opposition parties organize their MPs just like the government party does, except instead of forming real cabinets they form shadow cabinets, which have critics instead of ministers. So opposition MPs will run around calling themselves things like "the Liberal critic for consumer affairs" or whatever. The purpose of a critic is to offer poignant, targeted criticism of the government party's handling of a particular realm of concern, usually by making flamboyant accusations in question period (see below). Critics will also often unveil counter-proposal strategies, with the intent of giving the voters a glimpse of what life would be like had the election gone the other way. So if the finance minister says there there is going to be a massive tax hike, the finance critic might hold a press conference the next day and announce that under his party's plan there would actually be massive tax cuts.

The leader of the second-largest party is given the title of Leader of the Opposition, or more formally Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. This is a very formal job, complete with official residence and everything. The media generally treats him as the most important critic of all — the critic of the prime minister.

Backbenchers

A "backbench" MP is basically anyone who does not hold a formal office in his or her party caucus. They are neither cabinet ministers, nor even a shadow cabinet critic. Such people are called "backbenchers" because they literally sit in the back of the House chamber, far away from the important people in the front rows.

If you're a backbench MP it's usually a sign that your political career is going nowhere, and that you have little ability to influence the government — or even your party — in any meaningful way. Communities with backbench MPs rarely get good things built in their cities, and writing letters to them asking for help or information is generally considered an enormous waste of time.

The Speaker

The Speaker of the House of Commons gets to sit in a special chair at the front of the House chamber.

Next to the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, the most powerful and important person in the House is the Speaker. He is the fellow who chairs the day-to-day sittings of the House of Commons, calling on individuals to speak and enforcing rules of decorum and protocol. If there is ever a tie vote, he breaks the tie, and if there is every a dispute on some arcane parliamentary procedure, he makes the final ruling.

The Speaker is also a sitting MP, and is elected by a party-line vote in the first sitting of a newly-elected House. So in other words, he's always a member of the majority party. Despite this, British tradition says that the Speaker must strive to be as neutral as possible, so he's generally not considered a very partisan figure, and is definitely not a big player in the government's agenda.

Question Period

Question Period is the side of the House of Commons Canadians are probably most familiar with. The term refers to the practice of MPs publicly asking questions of each other on the floor of the House, or more specifically, opposition MPs demanding to know things from government MPs.

The Minister of Finance answers questions during Question Period.

It goes something like this: a couple of times a week, a large group of MPs will all sit in the House chamber together, with the government MPs on one side and the opposition MPs on the other. Then, starting with the party leaders, everyone will take turns asking questions of each other, usually in a very loud and theatrical matter. And lets' be clear: very little legitimate information is gained from any of this; question period exists more as an opportunity for grandstanding and partisan teasing than anything constructive. Indeed, your typical Question Period question will usually be very tightly scripted, and full of jokes, barbs, and clever one-liners. It's made a little bit more bizarre by the fact that they always direct their comments to the speaker, as is parliamentary tradition.

At a typical question period exchange, the opposition guy will be like:

Mr. Speaker, for five long years this government has refused to acknowledge the tragic plight of the beleaguered Canadian sea banana. I ask the minister today if his party is yet ready to bring any new proposals to the table, or if we will simply be "sea"-ing more of the same? (wild applause from all other Opposition MPs)

Then the government guy will be like:

Mr. Speaker, this government stands by its record of defending Canada's aquatic friends of all sizes and shapes, and we will gladly put our legacy beside the Opposition's any day of the week! (thumps table dramatically, to which other Government MPs respond with "ooooh!" in a teasing voice).

Highlights of Question period, needless to say, make for great clips on the nightly news.

Committees

People in the House of Commons are free to speak in either French or English. Since a lot of Canadians don't speak French, the House offers instant-translation services (hence the ear wires).

Less theatrical and more important are the Committees of the House of Commons. These are small groups of MPs who actually discuss and formulate legislation before it goes to the entire House for an up-or-down vote.

There are about 30 House Committees, and each one deals with a specific realm of concern, for example the Committee on the Environment, or the Committee on International Trade. Bills introduced in the House will be sent to the appropriate committee depending on what issue it seeks to address.

Membership of Committees is open to all parties, but is weighed in favor of their standings in the House. So the biggest party will hold the most members, and thus more or less determine what the committee will or will not approve.

Cabinet members are rarely members of committees, though they do strongly influence their outcomes. Good work in a committee is a way for a government backbencher to prove his worthiness for a promotion to the cabinet, while for opposition critics, committees are another great opportunity to grandstand self-righteously. Of course, since the proceedings of committees are not teleivised, the tend to generate far less interest overall.

• Members of the House of Commons

• List of House Committees

• Speaker of the House of Commons

• Party and provincial standings