Federalism in Canada

Federalism in Canada (French: Le fédéralisme au Canada) involves the current nature and historical development of the federal system in Canada.

Canada is a federation with eleven components: the national Government of Canada and ten provincial governments. All eleven governments derive their authority from the Constitution of Canada. There are also three territorial governments in the far north, which exercise powers delegated by the federal parliament, and municipal governments which exercise powers delegated by the province or territory. Each jurisdiction is generally independent from the others in its realm of legislative authority. The division of powers between the federal government and the provincial governments is based on the principle of exhaustive distribution: all legal issues are assigned to either the federal Parliament or the provincial Legislatures.

The division of powers is set out in the Constitution Act, 1867 (originally called the British North America Act, 1867), a key document in the Constitution of Canada. Some amendments to the division of powers have been made in the past century and a half, but the 1867 act still sets out the basic framework of the federal and provincial legislative jurisdictions. The division of power is reliant upon the "division" of the unitary Canadian Crown and, with it, of Canadian sovereignty, among the country's 11 jurisdictions.

The federal nature of the Canadian constitution was a response to the colonial-era diversity of the Maritimes and the Province of Canada, particularly the sharp distinction between the French-speaking inhabitants of Lower Canada and the English-speaking inhabitants of Upper Canada and the Maritimes.