Seniors enrolled in the AP Government and Politics course at Heuvelton recently visited the Canadian Parliament to learn more about democracy outside of the U.S. Students compared and contrasted our legislative branch, Congress, with the Canadian Parliament on October 10th.
Mr. Putney’s students made the following observations while visiting Ottawa.
“The color of the Canadian Senate is red. Red represented the monarchy because it was expensive to create and it therefore symbolized power and wealth” - Drew Blevins
“One member of our House of Representatives has approximately 700,000 constituents while each member of the Canadian House of Commons represents about 110,000 people.” - Rhys Brossoit
“The Canadian Senate has a service age limit of 75 while our U.S Senators do not.” - Dylan Demers
“Labrador and Newfoundland have an unequal amount of senate because they joined late. They have 6 senators each while the original provinces have 24 each.” - Reid Doyle
“I didn’t realize that Canada was the first country to publicly broadcast their senate meetings” - Lakan Martin
“Canadian Senators are selected by a committee rather than the voters directly. The committee selects those with an established prior career.” - Carley Simmons
“Similarly, the Canadian Parliament and our Congress each have committees that listen to testimony from experts in their field.” - Landon Wiegandt
To learn more about the Canadian Senate and the renovations on the Centre block of the Canadian Parliament click on the links below.