Australia has a similar system, but different statistics:
One Prime minister has been dismissed by the Governor-General (Whitlam in 1975).
One Prime Minister resigned because he lost a confidence vote in the lower house (Menzies in 1941).
Three Prime Ministers resigned because they lost a leadership vote within their own party caucus (Gorton in 1971; Hawke in 1991; Rudd in 2010)
Three were caretaker prime ministers, in office for a short time until the majority party in the lower house or in their coalition met to elect a leader following the death or disappearance* of the PM (Page in 1939; Forde in 1945; McEwen in 1968)
Three died or disappeared* in office (Lyons in 1939; Curtin in 1945; Holt in 1967).
*Yes, one prime minister disappeared, and is presumed to have drowned, because his body was never found: Harold Holt.
I don’t think so. Prior to the patriation and Charter, there had been precisely one (1) case where the Supreme Court found that a statute infringed the Bill of Rights. For the most part, the judges of the SCC kept harking back to parliamentary supremacy and saying that since the Bill of Rights was a simple federal statute, it could not have priority over other federal statutes. They made statements that if that was what Parliament wanted, then Parliament should produce a constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights.
As well, the Court gave a very narrow interpretation to the Bill of Rights, particularly the equality clause. For example, the Court adopted the “frozen concepts”, a very originalist intent approach: that whatever was on the statute books at the time the Bill was adopted was clearly within the intention of the parliamentarians, and could not by definition be a breach of the Bill. That approach severely hampered the legal effectiveness of the Bill of Rights. Given those precedents, it would have taken a long time before there was a major change, in my opinion.
Also, the Bill of Rights, being a federal statute, does not apply in any way to the provinces and cannot be made to apply to them. The Charter, being part of the Constitution, applies equally to both the federal government and the provincial governments.
Giles’ post jogged by memory - we have had two cases where a Prime Minister resigned because he foresaw that he would lose a confidence vote, but there was no general election: Macdonald in 1873 and King in 1926. In both those cases, the other main party formed the government without a general elecation (Mackenzie in 1873 and Meighen in 1926).
In all the other cases where the government lost a confidence vote, the PM stayed in office pending the general election. In most cases the PM lost the general and then resigned (Meighen, 1926; Diefenbaker, 1963; Clark, 1979-1980; Martin, 2005). In one case, the PM won the general and stayed in office (Trudeau, 1974).
Well, they can also resign before they turn 75 and be reappointed, so it’s not properly speaking a “limit”. Has it happened before that a senator resigned his post and was later reappointed to the Senate?
True, it doesn’t prevent a re-appointment, but it is a fixed term. I’m not aware of anyone who resigned and then was re-appointed. Too much competition for the seats, I would think: once you’ve made the Red Chamber, you’re set for life! (Or 75, whichever comes first.)
One minor nitpick - I think the current Parliament can last up to November 4, 2013.
The five year time limit doesn’t run from the date of the general election, but from the date for the “return of the writs” - i.e. - the date that the Chief Returning Officer for each constituency is required to return the writ of election, certifying the results in that constituency.
As a general rule of statutory interpretation in Canada, when a deadline is based on a particular event occurring, you don’t count the day the event occurs, so I would think you don’t count November 4, 2008 as part of the five-year period. It started on November 5, 2008 and will end on November 4, 2013.
Ahhh, gotcha. I’ll admit, that did occur to me after I posted the above, but I never got around to checking. I did recall that either Brian Mulroney/Kim Campbell (federally) or Bob Rae (provincially, in Ontario), or possibly both, ran their mandates right down to the last possible day, but whether that day was the anniversary of the election or of the return of the writs, I couldn’t recall.
At the risk of taking this into hijack territory, would you mind explaining to my non-lawyer brain if patriation of the Constitution and creation of the Charter of Rights was a good thing for your average Canadian?
One of the weaknesses of the original constitutional structure in 1867 was that there was no way to amend the most significant parts of the Constitution here in Canada. The British North America Act, 1867, as it was originally named, was an ordinary Act of the British Parliament. Although it gave the Parliament and the provincial Legislatures the power to amend some aspects of their individual constitutions, they could not amend the basic structure of the BNA Act itself. Only the British Parliament could do that, since it was a British statute.
That was fine in the beginning, when Canada was just starting to advance from colony to nation. It was anomalous by the end of WWI, and downright embarrassing by the latter part of the 20th century. Not having the power to amend our own Constitution was the last mark of our colonial origins.
Beside the symbolism of it, there were real political issues. Britain would amend the Act on a request from “Canada” - but who was “Canada”? did it mean the federal government alone? the federal government and all the provinces? the federal government and some of the provinces? At the height of the patriation debate, Trudeau asserted that the federal government had the sole power to advise the British government to amend the Act, implicitly saying that the federal gov’t could request that the British Parliament dissolve the provinces if it so desired. That sort of ambiguity in the amending process was definitely not a good thing.
Patriation ended the powers of the British Parliament to amend our Constitution, and created a new, purely Canadian amending formula for the future, set out in Part V of the Constitution Act, 1867. There have been criticisms that the amending formula is too rigid in some aspects, but in my opinion it’s still better than having to go to Britain with a poorly defined constitutional convention about who can request fundamental amendments.
With the Charter, there’s a lot more debate, because it raises significant issues about the role of the courts versus the elected officials, and the relationship between the individual and the government. Speaking purely personally, I think it’s a good thing overall, but you’ll get a range of opinions on it, both generally and in relation to particular issues.
An excellent (as always) post by Northern Piper on the story of our constitution.
Cat Whisperer, I’ll add that should you want to know more, a great resource is Edward McWhinney’s Canada and the Constitution 1979-1982: Patriation and the Charter of Rights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). Here are the fine details surrounding the debate that Northern Piper referred to: who is Canada? From whom should the UK Parliament take direction on this? How do we come up with an amending formula that results in a constitution that is neither too easy to amend nor impossible to amend at all?
The book’s title makes it sound dry and scholarly and academic, but McWhinney (although an academic) does a good job presenting the story of the repatriation of our constitution in plain language. IMHO, it is quite accessible to the layperson.
Correction: One Prime Minister resigned because he lost a confidence vote in the lower house (Menzies in 1941).
Menzies resigned in Cabinet (on the question of whether he should join the British War Cabinet or remain in Australia), his coalition’s replacement in Arthur Fadden’s government lasted six weeks before losing a vote of no confidence in the House.
Four Prime Ministers have lost office following defeat in Parliament: Deakin (twice 1904, 1908), Watson (1904) , Reid (1905), Fisher (1909), Fadden (1941).
Australian politics were tumultuous in the decade after Federation.
Actually, a PM could wait until the fall of 2014 to call an election were he so minded. The reason is that, while the parliament expires five years after being constituted, the PM is under no constitutional obligation to call parliament before a year. That is it is unconstitutional to go more than a year before calling parliament and if there is no parliament, he would have to call an election within a year. However, the criticism would be deafening. In practice, no PM wants to be seen hanging on till the last possible minute and mostly an election will be called with four years of the previous one.
I’m far from a Constitutional scholar, but I don’t see how the the law can change anything at all. As I understand it, only the Governor General can call an election. Usually a vote of no confidence results in the GG dissolving Parliament and calling an election, but this is not required. As Parliament has no Constitutional authority to call an election I don’t see how it can compel an election to be called earlier than the Constitutionally-required time. I suppose the law could be considered like a standing vote of no confidence, but that feels like a stretch to me.
There’s longstanding precedent in the British system, on which the Canadian system is of course modeled, for statute to restrict prerogative powers (those exercised by the sovereign or his/her viceregal stand-in, i.e., the GG). While only the GG can call an election, it’s possible to fix when and how he/she is obliged to call one – subject to limits of course.