MINORITY SCENARIO TWO

Conservatives lead in seats by comfortable margin, Trudeau decides to step down

Trudeau is not obligated to resign if the Conservatives emerge from the election with the most seats. As the sitting prime minister, he has the right to stay on and try to govern with the support of the Commons.

However, if the Conservatives have the most seats by a large margin, Trudeau will have a political decision to make: Should he step down as prime minister, given the message from voters? (Resigning as Liberal leader would be a separate decision.)

Scheer has already been arguing Trudeau should indeed step down in this situation. “What I’m saying is that the party that wins the most seats should be able to form the government, and the other convention in modern Canadian politics is that a prime minister who enters into an election and comes out of that election with fewer seats than another party resigns,” he said at a recent campaign stop. This is a common line from an opposition leader during an election; Trudeau said roughly the same thing in a CBC television interview in the 2015 campaign.

It is true that federally, the party with the most seats has almost always formed the government in a minority parliament situation (also called a “hung” parliament). In 2006, as a recent example, Paul Martin resigned as prime minister after his Liberals won fewer seats (103) than Stephen Harper’s Conservatives (124) — despite the fact Martin could have tried to govern with the support of the NDP (29) or the Bloc Québécois (51).

But there are also provincial examples where a party with fewer seats has formed government with the support of a third party. This happened in B.C. in 2017, when the NDP’S John Horgan became premier with the support of the Green Party despite winning slightly fewer seats than Christy Clark’s Liberals.

It all depends on political calculations. Lagassé calls it a custom of Canadian politics that the party with the most seats governs — in other words, it’s become common practice but it’s not a binding rule.

“It’s a custom with a lot of weight because it reflects a certain sense of fair-playing democratic propriety,” he said. “But the weight of the custom will begin to lessen the closer the margin is between the two leading parties. So if we’re only talking a five-seat difference, or if there’s a major ideological reason why the current party wants to stay on, then that custom falls away.”

If Trudeau decides to resign because the Conservatives have a large plurality of seats, the situation becomes relatively simple. Julie Payette, as governor general, would invite Scheer to form the government, given Scheer’s Conservatives would be by far the largest party and have the best chance to pass confidence votes.

If the seat margin is very close, or if the smaller parties decide to support the Liberals to block the Conservatives from forming government, that’s when things get complicated.