A primer on minority government
Making election predictions is a risky business, and Alberta’s last provincial election humbled most pollsters and prognosticators. Few of them forecast the decisive reelection of the ruling PC Party. We should be wary about predicting the outcome of Tuesday’s provincial election based on recent polling, too.
We should also be wary about assuming the election will produce a majority government simply because Alberta has never had a minority government. Until 2007, Quebecers had not elected a minority government in more than a century. Since 2007, they have elected two. Come Wednesday morning, Alberta’s leaders should be ready in case no party wins the 44 seats needed to form a majority government.
Minority government has become a familiar fact to Canadians recently. Both the Liberals and Conservatives have formed minority governments in Ottawa since 2004. The Quebec Liberals and PQ have both formed minorities in Quebec. Ontario’s Liberals have formed a minority as well. These experiences provide important lessons that Albertans should have in mind when the polls close on Tuesday.
1. The viceregal roles matter. Lieutenant-governors and governors general are usually busy doing the day-to-day work of representing the Queen in Canada. Conferring honours, recognizing community groups and formalizing legislation and orders in council is essential work for the public that rarely attracts much political attention.
When no party wins a majority of seats in an election, however, the viceregal officer plays a crucial role. He or she must ensure there is always a premier or prime minister in office who can command a majority in the elected legislature. Rules about how to play this role have emerged over the history of Commonwealth jurisdictions to form constitutional conventions, and Canadian scholars have helped to collect and assess these conventions over the years
If Alberta’s Lieutenant-Governor faces the challenge of a minority government on May 6, he has many sources of advice to guide his actions — his own experienced staff, academic experts and the senior, non-partisan public servants in the Alberta government. He can also draw on the truly expert counsel of his federal counterpart, Governor General David Johnston. Johnston, a former law dean and university president, will have sound advice on the viceregal role in a period of minority government.
2. The non-partisan public service matters more than ever. Scrupulous professionalism in the Alberta public service and the rest of the public sector will be essential if the province enters a period of minority government. Fortunately, the head of the provincial public service, Deputy Minister of Executive Council Richard Dicerni, is a veteran of minority government in Ontario and Ottawa. Mixed messages or confused lines of communications in the public service can have serious consequences in a minority situation. Deputy ministers and agency heads will need to provide Dicerni discreet support and follow his lead to avoid disrupting what could be a complex political situation.
3. A coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition. A prime minister or premier cannot remain in office if he or she has lost the confidence of the House or legislature. If none of the leaders gets a majority of seats in Tuesday’s election, there may be pressure to form a coalition government, with two or more parties agreeing to form a single cabinet and a voting bloc.
The United Kingdom has been governed by a coalition of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats since 2010. Lib Dem parliamentarians have held several senior portfolios in the cabinet of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. This arrangement has been difficult for both parties, as evidenced by the harsh words the two parties have exchanged in the current British election campaign, but it brought political stability to the U.K. in a time of economic crisis and the coalition survived in office for five years.
In Canada, minority government does not usually lead to coalition governments. Paul Martin’s government survived without a coalition partner after the 2004 election. Stephen Harper did the same from 2006 until 2011. Recent minority governments in Ontario and Quebec managed without coalition partners.
The government’s room to manoeuvre in a minority depends critically on the number of seats each party has. In the recent Canadian cases — Martin and Harper federally, the Quebec Liberals and the PQ, and the Ontario Liberals — the governments could win any vote in the elected legislature if just one of the opposition parties abstained; none of them required positive support from another party. Parties need more formal arrangements to govern with any certainty when the party winning a plurality of seats cannot command the support of the legislature. 4. The importance of meeting the legislature. Regardless of the immediate election outcome, an incumbent premier or prime minister has the right to test his or her support in the legislature or the House after an election. In the 1985 Ontario election, the PCs under Premier Frank Miller won the most seats but fell short of a majority. He named a cabinet, quickly recalled the Legislature and presented a Speech from the Throne. The Liberals and NDP meanwhile agreed on a plan to replace Miller’s government. They immediately combined to defeat the Miller government in the Legislature and Miller resigned to make way for David Peterson. Miller could have resigned before recalling the Legislature, but he chose otherwise.
Whatever happens on May 5 and regardless of who ends up as Premier, the government must recall the Legislature in the next few weeks to win legislative authority for its spending plans. The legislative session will begin with a Throne Speech and the first vote on the Speech will reveal whether the Premier can command majority support.
In any case, if the election produces a minority government, an early session of the Legislature is essential to see if that government can survive a confidence vote. That minority might survive a June legislative session but face renewed challenges in the fall or in early 2016. If the opposition parties contest the government’s abil- ity to survive a confidence vote, the government should test its support as quickly as possible.
5. The political dynamics of minority government are peculiar. A minority government can be stable if the positions of the political parties are properly aligned. Consider the recent examples at the federal level.
2004-2005 Paul Martin’s Liberals were reduced to a minority government in the June 2004 federal election and survived several confidence votes until they finally lost one in the House of Commons in November of 2005. As the centrist party, they faced an opposition party to their right — the newly united Conservatives — and one to their left — the NDP. When Liberal fortunes looked strong, one of the opposition parties always had an interest in delaying a new election and found a reason to sustain the Liberals in office. But as soon as Liberal fortunes sagged in the second half of 2005, the Conservatives and eventually the NDP felt they could gain at the Liberals’ expense in an election. They, along with the Bloc Québécois, toppled the Martin government and forced an election. Forming a minority government in the middle of the political spectrum is challenging.
2006-2008 That election gave the Harper Conservatives a plurality of seats and they formed a government with all opposition parties arrayed to their left. This, it turned out, was a more stable position for a minority. As long as the Conservatives held the right of the political spectrum and 36-38 per cent popular support, the Liberals and NDP rarely felt they could both pick up seats by forcing an election at the same time. Outside Quebec, the Liberals and NDP were engaged in zero-sum electoral competition and the Conservatives won confidence votes in the House.
The federal examples show how the stability of a minority government depends on the dynamics of electoral competition between the opposition parties as much as the competition between the government and opposition.
Come Wednesday morning, Alberta’s leaders should be ready for anything