Jared Klein is an Assistant Field Director at New Majority, helping thousands of young people to vote all across Canada.

During the first election that I ever voted in, I did some research and picked the party leader who I wanted to see become Prime Minister, and showed up at the polling station only to find out that their name wasn’t on my ballot.  In fact, their party wasn’t even on my ballot. I’d done a whole lot of research on federal parties, for what turned out to be a provincial election! Even if it had been the right level of government, I had focused all of my research on the leaders of the parties, so I didn’t know anything about my local representatives. That’s because Canada’s system is a little bit different from what most people expect. We don’t vote directly for our leadership, the way that people in the US do. Each voter gets to vote in three different elections at different times, to pick our representatives at each different level.

There are three levels of government in Canada; federal, provincial, and municipal. In a federal election, we are voting to elect the government of Canada. In a provincial or territorial election, we would be voting to elect the government of that province or territory – for example, the government of BC. In a municipal (or city) election, we elect our city council.

The federal government is the level of government that is responsible for the country as a w hole. They deal with issues like immigration and trade. Provincial governments make decisions only for their own province, and deal with issues such as healthcare and education. Cities and towns are governed by municipal governments. Each township or city has its own government, responsible for areas such as waste management and libraries.

Local representatives

In a federal election, you’re voting for your member of parliament, or MP. The country is divided into 343 geographical areas, called “ridings”. Each voter can only vote for one of the candidates in their riding, and the candidate in each riding who gets the most votes wins. Voters elect candidates in their riding to represent them as their MP in the House of Commons. In most cases, the party with the most number of elected MPs forms the government, and the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister.

In a provincial election, you’re voting for your provincial representative, who, depending on the province, might be called a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) or Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA).  Each province is also divided into geographical areas (ridings), and each voter can only vote for candidates in their riding. The leader of the party that forms government in your province is called the Premier.

Each city has slightly different election rules, so we’re not going to go into details on that today – but in general, you elect municipal representatives too!

Different responsibilities

But even if I had known to look up my local riding representative (rather than the leader of the party), I still would have been confused in that first (provincial) election.

That’s because the issue that I cared most about at the time was a federal issue, so everything I read about it was related to the federal political parties. None of the provincial parties were talking about it, because it wasn’t an issue that they worked on.

While each level of government is important, they each focus on different responsibilities. So when you’re getting ready to vote in an election, it’s important to make sure you check what responsibilities that level of government has. If you vote for your MLA because you like their stance on federal defense spending, you’re voting for them based on something they don’t actually make decisions about.

There’s a resource that I found super helpful here that helped me to understand what each level of government is responsible for.

Each level of government has different responsibilities. For example: Federal government is responsible for defence, income tax, airports, citizenship and immigration, passports, and the postal service. Provincial government is responsible for healthcare, education, transportation and highways, driver's licenses, and social assistance. Municipal government is responsible for garbage collection, water and sewage, fire and police services, parks, and libraries.

Finding my local riding

So how do you figure out who the candidates are that you get to vote for?

First, you have to figure out which riding you’re in. The ridings at the Federal and Provincial levels are not the same, so you might be in the same riding as your friend federally but in different ridings provincially – it’s always worth checking.

In a federal election, you can find your Electoral District (or riding) here by entering your postal code.

Each provincial election body also has a look-up tool to find your provincial riding.

All of this is important for elections, but it’s also important to be informed in between elections, when we want to reach out to our representatives to tell them our concerns, issues, and hopes. Now that I know which level of government is responsible for what, and who represents me at that level, I know who to email to tell them to fix things!

If you’re interested in learning more about ways to have your voice heard in between elections, sign up now for New Majority’s Let Us In project.