Who makes laws in Canada?
- Elected representatives in Parliament and the provincial legislatures
- Judges of the Supreme Court
- Municipal police
- The RCMP
Answer: Elected representatives in Parliament and the provincial legislatures
Laws are the written rules that guide society, and they are made by elected representatives in Parliament and the provincial legislatures. The courts settle disputes and the police enforce the laws, so judges and police do not make them.
Learn more: Where Canadian law comes from
- Sources of Canadian law: laws passed by Parliament and the provincial legislatures, English common law, the civil code of France, and the unwritten constitution inherited from Great Britain.
- These sources secure an 800-year-old tradition of ordered liberty that dates back to Magna Carta (1215), also called the Great Charter of Freedoms.
- Habeas corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention by the state, comes from English common law.
- The Quebec Act of 1774, passed by the British Parliament, restored French civil law in Quebec while keeping British criminal law.