Prime Minister of Canada in the context of "Parliament of Canada"

The Government of Canada (French: gouvernement du Canada), formally His Majesty's Government (French: Gouvernement de Sa Majesté), is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. The term Government of Canada refers specifically to the executive, which includes ministers of the Crown (together in the Cabinet) and the federal civil service (whom the Cabinet direct); it is corporately branded as the Government of Canada. There are over 100 departments and agencies, as well as over 300,000 persons employed in the Government of Canada. These institutions carry out the programs and enforce the laws established by the Parliament of Canada.

The federal government's organization and structure was established at Confederation, through the Constitution Act, 1867, wherein the Canadian Crown acts as the core, or "the most basic building block", of its Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. The monarch, King Charles III is head of state and is personally represented by a governor general (currently Mary Simon). The prime minister (currently Mark Carney) is the head of government, who is invited by the Crown to form a government after securing the confidence of the House of Commons, which is typically determined through the election of enough members of a single political party in a federal election to provide a majority of seats in Parliament, forming a governing party. Further elements of governance are outlined in the rest of the Canadian constitution, which includes written statutes in addition to court rulings and unwritten conventions developed over centuries.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (French: Charte canadienne des droits et libertés), often simply referred to as the Charter in Canada, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Charter guarantees certain political rights to Canadian citizens and guarantees the civil rights of everyone in Canada. It is designed to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody those rights. The Charter was proclaimed in force by Queen Elizabeth II of Canada on April 17, 1982, as part of the Constitution Act, 1982.

The Charter was preceded by the Canadian Bill of Rights, enacted in 1960, which was a federal statute rather than a constitutional document. The Bill of Rights exemplified an international trend towards formalizing human rights protections following the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instigated by the country's movement for human rights and freedoms that emerged after World War II. As a federal statute, the Bill of Rights could be amended through the ordinary legislative process and had no application to provincial laws. The Supreme Court of Canada also narrowly interpreted the Bill of Rights, showing reluctance to declare laws inoperative. Between 1960 and 1982, only five of the thirty-five cases concerning the Bill of Rights that were heard by the Supreme Court of Canada resulted in a successful outcome for claimants. The relative ineffectiveness of the Canadian Bill of Rights motivated many to improve rights protections in Canada. The British Parliament formally enacted the Charter as a part of the Canada Act 1982 at the request of the Parliament of Canada in 1982, the result of the efforts of the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

The Balfour Declaration of 1926 was issued by the 1926 Imperial Conference of British Empire leaders in London. It was named after Arthur Balfour, who was Lord President of the Council. It declared the United Kingdom and the Dominions to be:

The Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, chaired by Balfour, drew up the document preparatory to its unanimous approval by the imperial prime ministers on 15 November 1926. It was first proposed by South African Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

The Senate of Canada (French: Sénat du Canada) is the upper house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Crown and the House of Commons, they compose the bicameral legislature of Canada.

The Senate is modelled after the British House of Lords, with its members appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister. The appointment is made primarily by four divisions, each having twenty-four senators: the Maritime division, the Quebec division, the Ontario division, and the Western division. Newfoundland and Labrador is not part of any division, and has six senators. Each of the three territories has one senator, bringing the total to 105 senators. Senate appointments were originally for life; since 1965, they have been subject to a mandatory retirement age of 75.

The Canadian Ministry (French: Conseil des ministres), colloquially referred to as the Cabinet of Canada (French: Cabinet du Canada), is a body of ministers of the Crown that, along with the Canadian monarch, and within the tenets of the Westminster system, forms the government of Canada. Chaired by the prime minister, the Cabinet is part of and acts on behalf of the King's Privy Council for Canada and the senior echelon of the Ministry, the membership of the Cabinet and Ministry often being co-terminal; as of March 2025 there were no members of the latter who were not also members of the former.

For practical reasons, the Cabinet is informally referred to either in relation to the prime minister in charge of it or the number of ministries since Confederation. The current Cabinet is the Cabinet of Mark Carney, which is part of the 30th Ministry. The interchangeable use of the terms cabinet and ministry is a subtle inaccuracy that can cause confusion.

Mark Joseph Carney (born March 16, 1965) is a Canadian politician and economist who has been serving as the 24th prime minister of Canada since 2025. He has also been leader of the Liberal Party and the member of Parliament (MP) for Nepean since 2025. He previously was Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020.

Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1987. He then studied at the University of Oxford, where he earned a master's degree in 1993 and a doctorate in 1995, both in economics. He pursued a career at the investment bank Goldman Sachs before joining the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor in 2003. In 2004, he was recruited to the Department of Finance Canada as a senior associate deputy minister. From 2008 to 2013, Carney served as the eighth governor of the Bank of Canada, overseeing Canadian monetary policy during the 2008 global financial crisis. In 2011, he was appointed as chair of the Financial Stability Board, a position which he held for two terms until 2018. Following his term as Governor of the Bank of Canada, Carney was appointed as the 120th governor of the Bank of England, becoming the first non-British citizen to be appointed to the role. He served from 2013 to 2020, leading the British central bank's responses to Brexit and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Osgoode Hall Law School, commonly shortened to Osgoode, is the law school of York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is home to the Law Commission of Ontario, the Journal of Law and Social Policy, and the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. A variety of J.D. LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees in law are available.

The law school's alumni include three Canadian prime ministers, four Attorneys General, eight premiers of Ontario, four Mayors of Toronto, eleven Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, four of whom were Chief Justices, and one Academy Award nominee. The current dean of the law school is Trevor C.W. Farrow.

Justin Pierre James Trudeau (born December 25, 1971) is a Canadian politician who served as the 23rd prime minister of Canada from 2015 to 2025. He led the Liberal Party from 2013 until his resignation in 2025 and was the member of Parliament (MP) for Papineau from 2008 until 2025.

Trudeau was born in Ottawa, Ontario, during the first premiership of his father, Pierre Trudeau. He attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from McGill University and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of British Columbia. He then taught at the secondary school level in Vancouver before returning to Montreal in 2002 to further his studies. He served as chair for the youth charity Katimavik and as director of the not-for-profit Canadian Avalanche Association. In 2006, he was appointed as chair of the Liberal Party's Task Force on Youth Renewal. Trudeau was elected to represent the riding of Papineau in the House of Commons in the 2008 federal election. He became the Liberal Party's Official Opposition critic for youth and multiculturalism in 2009 and critic for citizenship and immigration in 2010. In 2011, he was appointed as a critic for secondary education and sport. In 2013, Trudeau was elected as the leader of the Liberal Party. He led the party to a majority government in the 2015 federal election, bringing the party from a third place finish in the previous election with the largest-ever numerical increase of seats by any party in a Canadian election. He became the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history and the first to be the child of a previous prime minister.