Parliamentary question: Leader of the Official Opposition crossing the floor to join government?

We’ve got an interesting situation developing in Alberta.

The provincial government is currently a right-of-centre party, called the Progressive Conservatives.

The Official Opposition is currently the farther-to-the right party, Alberta Wildrose. (Yeah, I konw; government and official opposition both being right of centre; it’s an Alberta thing.)

And, the Wildrose Party has fractured over various internal issues, leading to several members crossing the floor to the government side.

Including the leader of the Wildrose Party, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.

I can’t think of a situation where the Leader of the Opposition has crossed the floor to join the government, other than for coalition governments. But that’s not what’s happening here: she’s joining the PC Party.

Is there any precedent for this in a parliamentary system, where the Leader of the Opposition crosses over?

Outside of confidence and supply issues to avoid a new election? Or in a free vote? Can’t say I have.

The leader of a party that is in trouble may well be a placeholder… a fall guy… a scape goat. … someone disposable… No one who wants a long career wants the job of leader, lest he be used as a scapegoat… " I blame him for all the trouble, and when you vote to remove him from leadership, we can move on and be free of all that trouble ! "…

The name Opposition is often a misnomer, it really means “2nd in line”… the government in waiting… the shadow ministry… Often it may be that obvious, if hypothetical, that the so called opposition may have formed coalition with the government … presumably where the party with the most seats required help to form government…

OTH, when the whips start jumping, thats bad. Very bad.

That has not happened here has it.

Yes, I know of examples line that, where the Opposition agrees to prop
Up a government for a while, or when there’s a major national event, like a war or the Great Depression and the Opposition enters a coalition, but that’s not what’s happening here. She’s leaving the party which she leads to go over to the party in government, and will become a member of that party (according to initial news reports).

We did have a case here at the federal level a decade ago where a high-ranking member of the opposition party switched parties and saved the government in an extremely close confidence vote, but she wasn’t the leader of the opposition.

The Leader of a party has no official status except within the party. The leader is chosen within the party, among all eected members of the House, and if that party is in the majority, can be designated as the Premier, at the pleasure of the party. If the leader resigns from the party, the party just elects a new leader.

The leader of the opposition is simply the leader of the party that has sufficient seats to form the majority from those parties that are not aligned with the government. The Parliamentary system goes on, controlled by the majority party or coalition, who designate a Premier from within their party. The only restriction is that the leader of the party in the parliament has to be an elected member of the parliament.

This brings to mind a similar situation in the 70’s, when Tommy Douglas was the leader of the NDP. He failed to win re-election to his seat, which I think was in Saskatchewan. In order to continue to serve as leader of the NDP, he had to be a MP, so the elected NDP member for Elliot Lake resigned his seat, and a bye-election was called, with Douglas seeking and winning that seat, thus validating his parliamentary status as leader.

But in your case in Alberta, the member who crossed the floor is simply not a member of the party anymore, and the party needs to choose a new leader from whomever is left. That person will act as leader of the opposition, but to do so, needs to be an elected member of the legislature.

Northern Piper is very familiar with the Canadian parliamentary system. I think everyone is missing the question here.

In brief "Has there ever been a situation in a parliamentary system, outside of coalition governments, where the leader (in good standing) of the opposition has crossed the floor to sit with the governing party as a member of that party? "

Further to the above, even if the Premier dies in office, there is no general election necessary to find a new one.; The governing party simply appoints a new leader, who becomes the Premier. The only new election would be a bye-election in the Premier’s home constituency, where his death has created a vacancy. The Premier, by definition, is the designated leader of the party who has enough votes to form a majority. The Premier serves at the pleasure of the Crown, but it’s only a formality of presenting the credentials to the Governor General.

There doesn’t even need to be an opposition. In Newfoundland in the early Smallwood years, there was an election in which the Liberals won every seat, and there were no benches on the opposition side of the House.

As recently as the 1970s, there was a time when there were only two PC members forming the opposition.

None of which, though correct, have anything to do with Piper’s question.

Thank you to Ak84 and to Grey for taking the time to read my question and then respond to that question. I was starting to think that I had lost the ability to post questions that people can understand. :frowning:

In brief, my question is: can anyone think of a case where the Leader of the Opposition in a parluamentary system has crossed the floor to the government side?

I’m not interested in this thread in general comments on the parliamentary system.

I’m not sure. About six members of Wildrose have crossed the floor. Don’t know I any whips were amongst them.

Yeah, the Belinda Stronach defection is the closest thing I can think of (she was a member of the Shadow Cabinet, which is nothing to sneeze at.) Another couple of not-quite-right examples:
[ul][]Jean Charest, who resigned as the leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party to become leader of the Quebec Liberals. The Liberals also happened to be the federal majority party at the time, but Charest wasn’t the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition at the time, and he didn’t become part of the federal majority government (only the provincial government.)[]Robert N. Thompson, who switched from the leader of the federal Social Credit Party to the Progressive Conservatives in 1967 after the Quebec wing of the party split off. But again, he wasn’t the leader of the opposition at the time — the PCs were. Still, this is the closest I’ve found to the current Wild Rose situation (with party fragmentation and everything.)[/ul]FYI, there are Wiki pages for British politicians and Canadian politicians who have switched parties, which was where I found the info on the above two examples. (Admittedly, though, I should have remembered Charest on my own. Thompson was before my time.)

I can’t find an exact reference, but according to the chronology I can find, there might have been a similar situation in Newfoundland in 1969, although not an exact parallel. Gerald Ottenhemier won one of only three opposition seats in the House. Without an intervening election, Ottenheimer was appointed Speaker by Josepn Smallwood, the premier and leader of the Liberal party, after Ottenheimer had served only two years in the opposition benches.

If you want to find some bizarre precedents, Smallwood’s Newfoundland is a good place to start looking.

Sorry if I led you off-topic, but for some readers not fully familiar with parliamentary processes, I thought an explanation would be useful.

Labour MP Ramsay MacDonald became UK PM for the third time in May, 1929.

The Great Depression led to political turmoil out of which in Aug 1931 emerged a coalition generally known as the National Government, MacDonald continuing as PM.

Only two Labour PMs became members of the coalition, and MacDonald was in fact expelled from the Labour party.

If there was ever a political convention that Billy Hughes didn’t break, it was created after he died.

Hughes had spent a total of 58 years as an MP, and never lost an election. Hughes memorably clashed frequently with President Woodrow Wilson during the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919. Wilson described Hughes as a ‘pestiferous varmint’.

He was the last member of the original Australian Parliament elected in 1901 and was still serving in Parliament when he died October 1952, aged 90. During that time he’d gone from socialist to conservative with several U-turns, changed, split, merged, created & destroyed political parties.

Another Alberta opposition leader crossed the aisle (George Hoadley), but it appears it was immediately after he lost the leadership of the Conservative Party.

The Quebec Liberal Party isn’t affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, though.

Did he go from being leader of the official opposition directly to joining the government caucus, which is the General Question posed in this thread?

Or are you just wanting to post off-topic parliamentary trivia?

Sorry, I just saw that the UFA wasn’t governing yet. I forgot the Liberal Party ever ran Alberta.

Sorry, that comment was directed at penultima thule. I failed to see any relevance to his post.

I wasn’t aware of the Alberta example you gave, Hoadley. Thank you. That seems closer to the current example, but as you note, it was after the caucus stripped him of the leadership.