There are 308 seats in the House of Commons. If one party wins the majority of these (155 seats) then that party can do pretty much whatever it pleases for 4 years. A new bill sets fixed election dates at 4 years for majority governments.
If the party with the most seats does not have a majority then other parties can band together to defeat confidence issues, like budgets, for example. So if the governing party has say, 130 seats, at least two other parties with seats totaling greater than 130 could conspire and vote down any bills considered confidence issues.
Like the U.S., major changes are usually incorporated early in terms so that they might be forgotten by the next election. Minority governments are usually very circumspect in what major changes they will try to bring about, because if voted down, then the chances are good they might get defeated in the pending election.
The economy looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better. This election call is opportunistic for Harper, but since this has been the longest serving minority government in our history, you can hardly fault him for trying to grab a majority while it’s still possible. The polls are varied. I have a feeling we’re in for another Conservative minority, but it would be very difficult for any two parties to bring down the government for at least a couple of years after this next election. Unless it’s a majority and then it’s 3 years of passing everything you can while you can.
This isn’t the longest minority in Canadian history - that honour goes to the government of Mackenzie King, in office from 1926 to 1930, in the 16th Canadian Parliament. The Liberals under King had 116 seats in a Commons with 245 seats.
Well, I don’t think we do either. For example, we still have a fully functioning executive branch during the election: Stephen Harper is still Prime Minister, and all of his Cabinet ministers are still the heads of their departments, and they continue to have the same legal powers assigned to them by law, even though there’s an election on.
Plus, the civil service is professional and non-partisan - it keeps the wheels of government moving, doing all of the things that governments do, while all the politicians are out on the hustings. Usually, the Cabinet ministers delegate as much as they can to their Deputy Ministers, as authorised by law, and by convention, the PM and the Cabinet don’t start any major new undertakings during the election. The government, both Cabinet and civil service, are in “caretaker mode” - making sure all the routine things of government are continuing: pension cheques go out, crimes are investigated, laws and regulations are enforced. And, if there were some sort of crisis, like a major flood or fire (or somebody took advantage of our election cycle to invade Hans Island, [looks suspiciously over at Denmark]), the PM and the Cabinet could do everything necessary to respond - it’s not the case that we don’t have a government right now.
And if there is a change in government, it normally doesn’t have that much effect on the public service, except at the highest levels. The public service is professional and non-partisan, and would continue with the routine matters, while waiting for instructions from the new government for any changes in policy.
That’s true of all stable democracies, Canada included.
I think you’re being a bit thrown off by the term “dissolving the government” or “Dissolving Parliament.” The term “government” in a Canadian context has two meanings; one, which you’re using above, is the apparatus of state, the huge organization that runs a country’s national structure. THAT remains the same in Canada - actually, it’s one of the oldest continually operating constituted governments in the world.
In Canada, the second meaning of “government” is “the party currently in control of the House of Commons and therefore tasked with the executive responsibilities of policy.” It’s sort of analogous to the American term “administration,” as in “the Clinton administration” or “the Reagan administration.”
The “Government” being “dissolved” in a Canadian context means an election, nothing more. The apparatus of state remains constant, as it has since 1867.
Thank you for that. Linking the term “government” to “administration” makes sense to me. It seems that one important difference is that our executive is independent of the legislature. It often happens that the Congress is controlled by a different party than the party that holds the White House. The other stark contrast that jumps out to me is that Canada has a number of strong political parties while the United States only has two. We have many more parties, but only two stand a real chance in presidential elections and most congressional elections.
A couple of questions, though. How are Canadian Senators chosen? Are they standing for election during this time as well? Doesn’t the wholesale rebuilding of the legislative branch cause some turmoil?
Regarding the Governor General, the website indicates that she is the Commander in Chief of Canada. Does that mean that she makes military decisions in much the way that the US President (the Commander in Chief)? I assume that the Governor General is selected by the Queen. Doesn’t that put a lot of power into an unelected official? Does the Governor General have to be Canadian?
The Senate is an appointed body (by the Crown, on the advice of the PM) with zero real political legitimacy that functions primarily as a retirement plan for career politicians. It can theoretically block legislation coming out of the House of Commons, or send it back for reconsideration with suggested amendments. The former never happens, the latter only extremely rarely. The Senate has no ability to introduce legislation. There are people who would like it to be reformed, and others who would like it abolished. Either would require constitutional changes and are hence very unlikely.
The GG is strictly a figurehead. Any and all power vested in the GG, including being CinC, is exercised only upon the advice of the PM. That is, the GG does whatever the PM requests. Military decisions are made by Cabinet, but any substantial deployment issues would come up for votes in the Commons and would undoubtedly be issues of confidence. I don’t know if any requirement for Canadian citizenship has been introduced recently, but of course historically many GG’s have been Brits. These days a PM would have to be pretty brave to try appointing a non-Canadian, however, though one might note that the current tenant in Rideau Hall is a naturalized citizen who was born in Haiti.
In all fairness, some senators are doing a good job, and some have different backgrounds than “retired career politician”. But given the nature of the job, it’s up to them to make what they want to make of it, so if they don’t really want to work, they have no real obligation. Still, I find it useful to have another house whose members are not subject to the pressures of being elected and reelected.
As far as I know, the Senate can introduce legislation, just not money bills.
I seem to recall that this is correct. It’s why bills introduced in the House of Commons are always numbered as C-XX (the “C” for “Commons,” and “XX” being a number), to distinguish them from Senate bills, which are numbered as S-XX. However, while the Senate can introduce non-money bills, it rarely if ever does so.
Is there any lower limit on how often the PM can dissolve Parliament? I suppose if one did it every Friday like clockwork, it would annoy some people enough to vote the other party into power and bring an end to that, but if the winning party wins by a sufficiently substantial margin to make it spectaculalry unlikely that they’d fail to win again on a do-over, yet the PM feels the turnout was odd (nasty weather kept a significant number of likely supporters away from the polling stations or something) and that they really ought to have taken another couple dozen seats easily, can the PM just roll the dice again and see if the outcome is better?
No more so than a changeover of a Presidential administration. Bear in mind three things:
It’s not like we’ll end up with 308 completely new MPs. In all likelihood more than half the existing crop will remain in office, and the more prominent and important the MP, the likelier their re-election. The party leaders will all be swept back into office.
As has been pointed out, the structure of Canada’s govenment keeps the ball rolling. For most of the folks working at the Department of National Defence, or the Ministry of Revenue, it doesn’t matter who’s in office.
It’s actually no greater a change than the USA experiences in a Presidential election year; you’re re-electing every Representative, the President, and either 33 or 34 Senators.
Well, the theoretical limit is that you do need time to hold the next election.
However, theoretically, the government could throw in the towel almost immediately. As you allude to, what would stop them is the politics of it. If a sitting government tried this they’d be very badly punished by the electorate.
Presumably yes, the dice could be rolled again. But of course elections cost money, and time, and calling back-to-back elections would not bode well with the public. Jean Chretien’s Liberals called elections every 3 1/2 years or so in the 90s. But he had a distinct advantage at that time in that the conservative right was fractured between the traditional Progressive Conservative party, and a western grass-roots party called the Reform party. These two have now merged to become the Conservative Party of Canada. Now the left is all fractured with the Green Party gaining popularity, and the Liberals looking more and more socialist every day. So the shoe looks like it’s on the other foot now.
It wouldn’t make the government ‘better’ than it already was. A majority of (say) 35 over all the others is enough, and one of 75 does not improve your position. Indeed it can make the party more turbulent, if some MPs feel they can well afford the luxury of rebellion knowing it won’t make any difference to the outcome.
Also the voters don’t like being made a convenience of.
Party leaders can and do lose their seat. Kim Campbell lost hers in the Liberal sweep in the early 90s. Her party was reduced from a majority government to 2 seats. (Joke told me by son, college-age: Why is a Chevy better than the Conservative party? Because the Chevy has more than seats.) Should the party of a PM losing his seat still win a majority, he can still be prime minister, but not allowed in Commons. And he will quickly have someone sitting in a safe seat resign and have a by-election in that riding. The person who resigned would normally get some nice plum, usually an appointment to the senate.
That’s right. Here’s the complete list of bills that were in the Senate last year. Bills with an S were introduced in the Senate, with a C were introduced in the Commons, passed all stages there, and then introduced in the Senate: Senate - Progress of Legislation.
The Government sometimes does introduce bills in the Senate, if they’re relatively non-controversial. For non-controversial bills introduced in the Senate, the Government relies on the Senate to do the review of the bill, and then the bill often passes quickly through the Commons. This is a time-saving measure, since it means the Commons doesn’t have to spend a lot of time on the non-controversial bills.
As well, individual Senators introduce a lot of bills, but they rarely go all the way to Royal Assent. Senators introduce the bills to try to get public attention for a particular issue. It may help to get the Government’s attention to adopt the measure.
For example, a Senator’s private bill in this past session to amend the Criminal Code provisions relating to cruelty to animals got enough support that it actually did go through the entire legislative process and got Royal Assent: Bill S-203.
Both happen more often than you might think. For example, the reason Canada doesn’t have any criminal prohibition on abortion is because the Mulroney government’s abortion bill got defeated in the Senate. That was a major, controversial piece of legislation, but the fact that the Senate defeated it doesn’t seem to have raised much debate.
As for amendments, if you take a look at the Progress of Bills page I linked to above, you’ll see that there are Senate amendments to several of the Commons bills. Sometimes the Commons accepts the amendments, sometimes refuses them.
Take Bill C-2, one of the Harper Government’s main bills on conflicts of interest and election financing. The Senate made 158 amendments. Then there was dickering between the two Houses:
So the Commons accepted about a third of the Senate amendments outright, and then the remaining ones got tinkered with in a Senate committee, and then the Commons accepted the remaining amendments.
I was actually thinking of that when I posted, but I figured when the last time was twenty years ago, “never” wasn’t really hyperbole. Guess I should have known I’d get nitpicked on it.
I was, however, unaware of the frequency of Senate amendments being adopted. Thanks.
This is one of the rare situations where the Governor General may exercise the reserve powers of the Crown and refuse a dissolution. If the government of the day is defeated at the polls and another party has a clear majority in the new Commons, the defeated Prime Minister could, in theory, request that the new Parliament be dissolved immediately. In practice, Her Excellency would refuse the dissolution and call for the leader of the party with the majority.
If the new Commons is a minority situation, Her Excellency would likely also refuse the dissolution and require the Prime Minister to face the House. If he can cobble together a minority government, there’s no need for an immediate dissolution. If he can’t, but the leader of another party is able to establish that he/she has the confidence of the House, Her Excellency would send for that person to be Prime Minister. Only if no party can command the confidence of the House would Her Excellency accept the advice for an early election.
