But such an arrangement isn't always necessary. Stephen Harper's Conservatives, for instance, governed without any kind of formal agreement from to , alternately winning support for legislation or daring the opposition to defeat them on a case-by-case basis. Basic constitutional procedure can never be perfectly divorced from politics, of course. Harper's Conservatives condemned the coalition as an unholy arrangement and, after prorogation, the Liberals lost their nerve.
But discussions about how a minority government might function should be tethered to the basic facts of how our parliamentary system was set up to work. The results on Oct. But the ultimate "winner" will be the party leader who can hold the confidence of the House. A variety of newsletters you'll love, delivered straight to you.
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Comments on this story are moderated according to our Submission Guidelines. Comments are welcome while open. We reserve the right to close comments at any time. Also, unlike a majority, a minority government must rely on support from other parties or independent MPs to pass legislation because doing so requires a majority vote in favour of its passage. Q: So would any party that wins a plurality, but not the majority of seats on Oct.
A: Not necessarily. There are a few possible scenarios. The simplest sees the Liberals win a minority mandate and stay in office. At least for the moment. If the Conservatives win the most seats, the defeated Liberal prime minister could resign and the governor general could ask the Conservative leader to form government. The latter is only an option in a minority situation, and it has happened previously. In October , the election returned Liberals, Conservatives and 24 Progressives.
The incumbent Liberal government did not resign and governed with the support of the Progressives until June What issues are important to them?
Any idea for a new law or a change to current law is written down. The idea is now called a bill. The bill is printed and read in the Chamber where it is introduced. The bill is given a Second Reading in the Chamber where it is introduced, where parliamentarians debate the idea behind the bill. At the Committee Stage, the bill is studied carefully. Committee members hold hearings or special meetings where different people inside and outside government can make comments about the bill.
The committee can ask for government officials and experts, or witnesses , to come and answer questions. The report of this committee is considered by the house, and during this stage further amendments may be made. Finally the bill is given a third reading, which is a chance to look at the bill as it has emerged from the committee and report stages. The debate is confined strictly to the contents of the bill, and is usually a formality.
Bills presented to the UK Parliament are divided into three categories: public bills, private bills, and hybrid bills. Public bills deal with subjects of general public interest. Nearly all public bills are government bills, but occasionally an unofficial bill one initiated by a private member becomes law. In , 35 public bills were enacted, which is below the average, which would be about In , four of these bills were passed, which again was below the average, which is about twenty.
Hybrid bills are public bills which may affect private rights, and are dealt with by a special procedure. They are rare, with only ten passed between and All twenty parliaments use both types of public bills, but private bills are not universal and hybrid bills are not used outside the UK. The first reading of a government bill originating in the House of Commons is a mere formality. A government bill originating in the House of Lords is deemed to have been given a first reading when it is received in the Commons and a member has told the clerks that he is taking charge of it.
The second reading is normally the key stage, when the purpose of the bill is debated and a decision made whether the bill should continue. A government normally has the numbers to pass its bills in the House of Commons, but it may have problems if it is a minority government, and difficulties may arise even when it has an apparently secure majority.
MPs at Westminster do not have to maintain a quorum in the chamber during debates, and ample notice is given of divisions. The responsibility for maintaining party attendance rests with the whips, who send round weekly notices to their MPs warning them when important divisions are expected and indicating the relative gravity of the occasion by the number of lines-one, two or three-drawn under the message.
There is therefore not the same pressure as in the other parliaments for MPs to remain close to the chamber all the time the House is in session. Moreover, party discipline is now much looser at Westminster than it is elsewhere. The committee stage is where a government bill is examined in detail. The number of committees was increased to four in , and since the standing orders of the House have provided for bills to be automatically referred to a standing committee, unless the House of Commons orders otherwise.
Other bills which may be dealt with by the committee of the whole House are ones which the government needs to pass quickly when the courts have found a previous act defective, for example , or are of a very uncontroversial nature for example a bill consolidating existing law , and the debate is expected to be so brief that it would not be worthwhile establishing a standing committee.
The remaining bills are sent to standing committees. The purpose of sending a bill to a committee is not to have it more carefully examined, but to enable a number of bills to be dealt with simultaneously, thus speeding up their handling. Each standing committee is known simply by a letter of the alphabet Standing Committee A and so on and members are appointed afresh for each bill. Each committee is chaired by a member appointed by the Speaker, who is supposed to be politically neutral.
The relevant minister and shadow minister are members of the committee. The membership of the standing committees on bills is ad hoc and is apportioned according to party strength, so that the government party normally has control.
The strength of the committees may vary between sixteen and 50, and the committee members are appointed afresh for each new bill. Even when the government has lost its absolute majority, as happened to Labour in and the Conservatives in , no more than parity with the opposition parties is conceded. The chairman, who is appointed by the Speaker, then has the balance of power, and by tradition uses his vote to support the original terms of the bill, and thus frustrates all evenly-contested amendments, opposition or government.
The number of standing committees is adjusted so as to meet the workload. There are usually not more than six or seven. The procedures in both the standing committees on bills and the committee of the whole House are the same as in the House of Commons, except that members may speak more than once to the same question.
There is no direct input from the public, and no questioning of civil servants. When the standing committee has made any amendments it desires, the amended bill is reported to the House of Commons, and further amendments may be moved, though the Speaker will not normally permit amendments which have been fully debated in the committee to be moved again.
This was not used very often between and , only 32 bills being guillotined during that twenty year period, but was much more used in the s, particularly by the Blair Government, 51 bills being guillotined during that decade. This should be compared with the Australian House of Representatives, where as many as bills have been ruthlessly guillotined in a single year.
This was in , under the Keating administration. Since there has been an alternative procedure by which a bill can be referred to a special standing committee, which may take written and oral evidence from interested parties in up to three meetings. These hearings have to be completed within four sitting weeks, unless the House permits a longer period. This procedure has been rarely used, less than one in a hundred bills having been so referred since the procedure was introduced.
Money bills are handled somewhat differently. In the UK the financial year commences on 31 March. Until the practice was for spending plans to be announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in November. There was a full debate on this statement two or three weeks later. A further debate to consider the public expenditure plans was held in the New Year, the process being completed by the budget statement in March, which included any proposed tax plans, a new economic forecast and the latest estimates of the result of public expenditure for the year just ending.
The November budget was the first of a new style of budgets by which spending, borrowing and taxation decisions were brought together in one statement to the House of Commons. The start point was the budget which was introduced in November, with an updated economic forecast. In addition to a broad overview of the economic situation, in his budget speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced all the specific motions which would authorise the taxing charges to be incorporated in the Finance Bill.
Some of these motions could be moved immediately to give provisional effect to tax changes, on tobacco or beer for instance. The debate on the budget usually lasted five days, at the end of which all the budget motions were voted on and passed without further debate. This arrangement did not last. In the course of his speech on the budget the Chancellor in the Blair Government announced that from the budget would revert to March, with a pre-budget report published in November each year.
The Finance Bill incorporating the agreed resolutions is introduced after the budget motions have been passed, and often contains tax changes as well as the revenue necessary for the budget. The Finance Bill is handled like any other bill, except for the committee stage. At that stage some of the proposals, selected by the opposition, are debated in a committee of the whole House. Those matters chosen are the most politically controversial, and usually three days are made available.
The remainder of the Finance Bill is considered by a standing committee, with the minister attending and answering questions. Although civil servants are present, they cannot be directly questioned. The committee may well meet a dozen times before it is satisfied. In the standing committee sat for hours, but this was exceptional.
Many amendments are proposed, both in the standing committee and the committee of the whole House. These amendments are to stake out political positions or to earn the favour of pressure groups, and there is time to debate only a fraction of them. The main estimates of expenditure are presented to the House at the same time as the budget, and these estimates are accompanied by an explanatory statement.
As extra funds are needed during the course of the year, supplementary estimates are presented. Scrutiny of these estimates is cursory.
Since the House of Commons has set aside three days for debating the estimates, and for considering amendments to the Supply Bills, which authorise the estimated expenditure. The problem is not that no one cares about the effectiveness of the parliament in these matters; it is rather getting something done about it. In the late s there were two committees in the House of Commons looking at the problem-the Procedure Committee, made up of backbenchers, and the Modernization Committee, controlled by the government with the Leader of the House in the chair.
In July the Procedure Committee proposed radical reforms to increase the control of the House as a whole, and its select committees, over government expenditure, with the appropriate increases in the resources available to the various committees.
The aim was to shift the examination from the annual estimates to long term expenditure plans. The select committee would have to report within 60 days, and no money could be voted until the committee had reported. The Canadian Parliament passes an average of about 40 government public bills a year, all of which these days originate in the House of Commons.
From the late s all bills were automatically referred to standing committees, but this was changed in so that specific bills were referred to legislative committees for review, an arrangement which was stopped in In that year, standing orders were amended to permit a bill to be referred to a committee before the second reading, and this is becoming increasingly common.
Only a minister can move such a motion, and there is then a three hour debate in which MPs are limited to single ten minute speeches. The committee then effectively carries out the second reading and committee stages of a normal bill, and reports back to the House with any proposed amendments.
Further amendments may be moved at this report stage, in the usual way. Typical bills related to bankruptcy, conflicts of interest of MPs, and gun control. Cross-voting is not uncommon on such bills, but is frowned on by party leaders. After fourteen Liberals cross voted in , mainly on controversial legislation on gun control and hate crimes, Prime Minister Chrtien reacted angrily, stripping some of them of their committee responsibilities and even threatening not to sign their nomination papers in the future.
In the Parliament, 25 bills-about 20 per cent of the bills passed-were referred in this way, but in the next Parliament this had dropped to four bills. If there is general consent, a bill may be dealt with by the committee of the whole House of Commons, but this is very rare. It was used in December during the consideration of the free trade agreement with the US and Mexico.
The committees considering bills are adequately staffed, with technical assistance provided by the research staff of the parliamentary library, supplemented when necessary by experts from the community chosen by the government. Some MPs still do criticise the level and quality of support available to committees, and certainly having the government select the expert advisers is objectionable. The committee hears evidence from the responsible minister and senior public servants and, if it wants to, from members of the public.
The committee then considers the bill clause by clause. There is no official time limit on this consideration, though the parliamentary secretary to the minister sponsoring the bill is a member of the committee, and he may try to exert pressure on the chairman always a government party MP to hasten things along if he can. The only committees not traditionally chaired by a government member are the standing committees on Public Accounts and Scrutiny of Regulations.
New amendments may be moved, but the Speaker will not usually permit the moving of amendments which have been rejected by the committee, which has discouraged some MPs from moving their amendments there.
Even though their amendments may fail in the House, they prefer to move them there in the brighter glare rather than in a dull committee room. The procedure is rather slow moving, and all governments have difficulty completing their legislative programs. The solutions adopted by both Liberal and Conservative governments have been to use omnibus bills covering several different subjects; to word the bills broadly so that fewer amending bills will be required in the future; and to make very extensive use of delegated legislation, which effectively by-passes the parliament.
This is all very well, but the public comment goes to the government, not the legislature. Three new procedures have recently been adopted in Ottawa. The first is the possibility of the appointment of non-MPs to the committees. These appointed committee members are usually experts in the relevant field, and are able to question witnesses, take part in committee debates and the drafting of reports, but not to vote.
The third new procedure is in some ways the most interesting. In the Liberal Party, then in opposition, proposed that some government bills should be prepared by the relevant parliamentary committees. This was designed to overcome the problems of the handling of controversial bills, which usually resulted in rigid party positions:.
Once the Bill is prepared, since it is creature of a committee, rather than of the government, there would Debate on subsequent stages of a Bill drafted by a committee is not likely to lend itself to bitter partisanship Eventually, virtually all legislation could be initiated by committee.
In the new Liberal government amended standing orders to allow instructions to be given to a committee to prepare and bring in a bill. The committee is expected to provide the necessary instructions for the drafters, after hearing such evidence as it chooses on the purpose of the bill.
The committee may, if it wishes, include recommendations regarding the actual wording. This is a significant change in the balance of responsibility between the government and the legislature, moving towards the American model. In fact the system has been little used.
The procedure was first tested in , over a review of legislation concerning the adjustment of electoral boundaries. The bill was quickly passed by the House of Commons with a few technical changes, but died in the Senate. The parliamentary systems in the Canadian provinces are marked by short sessions so that part-time legislators face full-time governments, and the opposition is often very weak. In the past 50 years there have been 26 landslide election results, with one party winning 85 per cent or more of the seats.
Eight of these have been in Alberta, but the most dramatic was in New Brunswick in , when the Liberals won every seat. Such majorities do not make for effective legislatures.
Six of the provincial legislatures do not refer public bills to legislative committees, partly because of an historical reluctance on the part of the legislatures to reduce their power, and partly because in small provinces like Prince Edward Island there are not many bills and the Assembly itself is little bigger than the average committee 27 MPs, of whom ten are ministers.
Six provinces Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island do regularly refer public bills to standing or select committees after they have been given a second reading.
Despite these committee hearings, it is very rare for opposition amendments to be accepted, except when there is a minority government. British Columbia refers about one public bill in a hundred to a standing committee, and Prince Edward Island about five a year.
Newfoundland in started an experiment by which some government bills may be referred to one of three five-member parliamentary committees, but this idea was dropped and in recent years no bills have been referred to committees for examination. Manitoba has a unique provision by which members of the public have the right to present their views to the committee, either orally or in writing.
The number of such contributors has varied from none to over The committees could set time limits for such witnesses, but almost never do. In four of the provinces there is unlimited time available to the assembly for the consideration of estimates and even where there are limits they are generous by the standards of most other parliaments: twenty sitting days in Alberta, for instance.
Only three provinces Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland automatically refer the estimates to committees. In Ontario, the Standing Committee on Estimates selects between six and twelve ministries for detailed review of up to fifteen hours per ministry. The unselected ministries are deemed to be concurred in. The supplementary information provided with the estimates is generally quite inadequate, but in any case the estimates are almost never altered, except to correct typographical errors.
The amounts so granted are retrospectively approved, usually in the supplementary estimates. The argument for such grants is that they are needed for urgent or emergency tasks, but the other countries do not seem to need them, and their use is a clear breach of a fundamental principle of responsible government. Before some reforms were made in , the Australian House of Representatives was almost totally ineffective as a legislature.
It passed an average of government bills a year, almost three times as many as were passed in the UK. Consideration of the detailed wording of bills was perfunctory.
Except for a brief experiment, bills were never referred to standing or select committees. The details were considered in a committee of the whole House of Representatives, the only differences from the normal procedure being that the Chairman of Committees rather than the Speaker presided, and each member was permitted to speak on each motion for two periods not exceeding ten minutes. The minister in charge could speak for unlimited periods as often as he wanted. To see how ineffective the House of Representatives was as a legislature at this time, it is worth looking at a typical year.
In the House passed bills, but only 34 of them were considered in detail in the committee, the remaining bills simply by-passing this crucial stage. There were two methods by which this was achieved.
A procedure adopted in permitted the House to proceed straight from the second reading to the third reading of the bill, omitting the detailed examination of the bill in the committee. Of course the government would not ask to omit the committee stage if the minister had amendments of his own to move, usually second thoughts from his department or suggestions made by government party backbenchers. A single voice could have insisted on a committee stage for any bill, but none did on 89 bills.
Only one opposition amendment was successful during the whole of The amendment altered the heading of a schedule to Customs Bill No. Another way to stifle debate on bills was also ruthlessly used. The Australian Parliament sits for only half as many days as do the Canadian and UK parliaments, and it is always a rush to get all the legislation through.
The guillotine helps. In the Parliament the government passed a guillotine motion requiring the passage of twelve bills in six and a half hours, including six bills which were allowed only two minutes each for all stages, which is surely an insult to the parliamentary process. Other national parliaments also use the guillotine, but with nothing like the same ruthlessness. The standing orders of the Canadian House of Commons, for instance, provide for agreements between the parties for time allocations for the stages of a bill.
If agreement cannot be reached, a minister may move the guillotine, but not less than one sitting day must be provided for each stage of the bill. Things continued very much the same for the next two decades in the Australian Federal Parliament.
The Parliament continued to pass an astonishing amount of legislation. The number of bills not considered in detail-that is, for which there were no committee stages-averaged a year, which is an extraordinary dereliction of duty by a legislature. There was also no serious attempt to listen to suggestions from the opposition, even though some of them were genuine attempts to improve the legislation.
The increase in the use of the guillotine to restrict debate on bills was also disturbing. In the three years of the Whitlam Labor Government it was used an average of twenty times a year. Its use fell sharply in the Fraser years to an average of two, and in two of the years the guillotine was not used at all. The Hawke Labor Government, elected in , reversed this trend and used the guillotine ruthlessly. In its first seven years it guillotined more bills than had been so treated in the entire period since federation.
In , bills out of were declared urgent, while in each of the years , and over bills were given restricted debating time or guillotined. All government amendments were put together and passed when the allotted time expired. It was scarcely worthwhile for the opposition to divide on the bills or the amendments, for a division takes eight minutes and this would eat into the scanty time available for the next bill.
There were attempts to do something about the problem. In , during the Fraser Government, an experiment was made with legislation committees, more or less on the Westminster lines. A bill could be referred to a legislation committee after its second reading, but only if no MP objected. A committee had between thirteen and nineteen members, with what was intended to be a safe government party majority.
The procedures were much the same as in the committee of the whole House, and the committees were not permitted to call witnesses. Thirteen bills were referred to the committees in the first three years. There were no amendments to six of them, and in a further four the only amendments came from the minister.
The remaining three were interesting, because in all of them opposition amendments were either accepted without division, or passed with government party cross voting. The cross voting occurred on a bill dealing with listening devices for narcotics offences, and on another bill to ban whaling, which had a controversial clause making it an offence for an Australian citizen to take part in whaling anywhere in the world.
This experiment with legislation committees was not really a success. Less than 5 per cent of bills were referred to the committees, and not more than two committees were ever operating at the same time.
Their inability to take expert evidence limited their effectiveness. Their proceedings were constantly interrupted by quorum calls in the House, which committee members had to answer.
Worse still, the committees were bitterly resented by some influential ministers, who did not like the scrutiny they gave to bills and particularly the cross voting.
The committees lapsed in , partly because the leading backbench advocate had lost his seat at the elections. Nevertheless it should be noted that the only bills amended in the House on opposition initiative between and were the two mentioned above.
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