Post-election, a duty to sit
In the wake of Canada’s May 1979 general election, Joe Clark’s new Progressive Conservative government chose not to recall Parliament until October — a full 140 days later.
Why am I recalling this piece of political history? And why should you care? Because history may be about to repeat itself.
While Parliament is nominally scheduled to be recalled after the current election on Nov. 16, this can easily be delayed by whoever leads Canada’s next government — whether it is an incumbent or new government.
The prime minister, whoever he may be, might indeed find it to his advantage to delay meeting Parliament for as long as possible. That option should not be open to him.
The central tenet of Responsible Government holds that the executive governs only as long as it enjoys the confidence of the legislature. For Responsible Government to operate in a meaningful way, it is necessary that the House actually sits to fulfil its fundamental responsibilities, including extending and withdrawing confidence as it sees fit.
As a new minority government, Clark’s Conservatives exercised power for more than four months without giving the House an opportunity to express whether it actually held confidence in the government or not.
While Clark’s government managed to pass a Speech from the Throne — ironically largely focused on reforming Parliament — it failed to survive a confidence vote on Dec. 13, just days after its budget was introduced. Clark’s government lasted a mere 66 days from the date it first met Parliament.
There are different reasons a prime minister might find it politically advantageous to delay meeting the House. For example, if it is not clear his government has the support of the House, the prime minister may wish to simply start governing with the hope of building public support for his agenda. Alternatively, a prime minister might want to bide time to create or encourage public skepticism about possible alternative governments — including possible coalition governments — in order to dissuade opposition parties from attempting to form government or joining forces to defeat the government when it has a plurality, but not a majority, of seats.
Indeed, the House regularly goes without sitting for several weeks, or even months, following an election. The situation is even worse in some of our provincial legislatures.
In other advanced democracies, this is not possible. The Australian constitution requires that Parliament be summoned within 30 days. Germany and Ireland also require that Parliament meet within 30 days of an election. Denmark, Norway and Sweden all require that Parliament be recalled within two to three weeks.
By contrast, Canada has no rule establishing a firm timeline for when the House must meet after an election. Section Five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires that there “be a sitting of Parliament and of each legislature at least once every twelve months.” Moreover, the procedural process for “supply” — the budget — requires meeting the House each fiscal year.
Aside from these requirements, there are no other formal rules that a legislature need sit more than once, nor a minimum number of days, in a given year. It is doubtful if many citizens would find the legislature sitting for one day per year as sufficient to afford them a basic functioning democracy. At best, it pays lip service to the notion of Responsible Government. Without a regularly sitting legislature, there is no democratic link between the expectations of citizens and what governments do.
While formal reform ought to be implemented to require that the House be summoned quickly after an election, in the context of the current election this could be resolved quite simply: the leaders of the three parties who stand a chance of forming government after Oct. 19 — either as a single party minority government or as part of a coalition or governing accord — could all make a clear, unqualified public commitment that the House meet within 30 days of the election.
This should not be seen as an onerous requirement. True, the results of this month’s election may leave in question who will be able to form a government capable of commanding the confidence of the
The major party leaders must agree to convene Parliament within 30 days of the election
House. So what? In the aftermath of the 2010 U.K. election — an election that produced their first hung Parliament in 36 years — it took extensive negotiations before a new government could be formed from a coalition of the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties. Yet Parliament was summoned in just two weeks. It also only took two weeks to summon the Australian Parliament after the 2010 election, even though it was not clear for a number of days which party would form the government there.
If both the U.K. and Australia can meet the House quickly in order to clarify whether or not the government has confidence — and thus protect the principles of Responsible Government — there is no reason Canada should not do the same.