Correct me if I'm wrong, but Canada doesn't use a popular vote either?
Ummm, that's because it's a parliamentary system.
As I mentioned in
a past post, the Canadian chief executive is technically not elected at all, by popular vote or otherwise. Although that point is mostly a technicality, some theorists would argue that there is a possibility that elected politicians might act somewhat more timidly when they have no power in their own right and are mere subordinates of a long-term ruler. According to this theory of government, the long-term ruler does not have to pander to popular opinion and can always act as a final fallback against grave errors. As I noted in
another past post, some libertarians have actually argued for monarchy over republicanism basically on that basis. I express no view on these matters.
It's important to realise that, like the United States, Canada has an entrenched, written constitution (although it includes several documents rather than being a single integrated text like the US Constitution). For a list of the documents that collectively comprise the Canadian Constitution, see section 52(2) of the
Constitution Act, 1982, Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11. The reason I mention this is that Canada didn't just fall into a particular system by happenstance; rather, the architects of the Canadian constitutional documents had to decide how to unify several independent colonies and how to distribute powers between them -- a very similar problem to that faced by the American framers.
As you might expect, the Constitution of Canada actually involves a very similar set of compromises as the US Constitution, and it was (and is) designed to solve a very similar set of problems. To be sure, there are very substantial differences both in the historical context and in the result, but there are some striking similarities in the principles underlying the organic documents of both countries. If you read the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada in
Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 SCR 217,
1998 CanLII 793, you will learn that, according to the Court, there are "four fundamental and organizing principles of the [Canadian] Constitution" (¶ 32), namely:
- federalism;
- democracy;
- constitutionalism and the rule of law; and
- respect for minorities.
These are very similar to the principles that animate the US Constitution.
Again, the specific compromises that came out of those principles are different in Canada than in the United States, but if you review the Canadian constitutional documents, it's clear that the authors grappled with many of the same issues as their American predecessors. You may find it interesting to study these documents.