Civics 101

I’ve been following the events on Parliament Hill for the past couple of weeks fairly closely, as have so many Canadians.  Unfortunately much of what I’ve seen is less concerned about facts spin.

It’s unfortunate that so many people don’t know how our parliamentary system works.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m the last one to defend it since I’m such a vocal supporter of change in the form of proportional representation.  But it has amazed me the vast number who simply don’t understand our system.  And then there’s the smaller subset who like the system just fine as long as it is working for their party of choice but not when it works against them.

In a pro-rep system, which I would prefer, it becomes even more important that people understand how governments are formed from the members we elect to Parliament.

Let me make my point clear below and in doing so I will follow Mollie’s example from our conversation the other day and use in my example parties A, B, C, etc.  Hopefully that way I can talk about how the system works without referring to the specific parties and inviting such biting, partisan comments as “Harper/Dion/Layton/Deceppe/May is an idiot/liar”.  These comments are not helpful.

Canada has a parliamentary system in which people do not vote directly for the Prime Minister.  For that matter, we do not even vote directly for the government.  What we do is elect local representatives into the House of Commons in a First Past The Post system.

The Prime Minister is selected from those (now 308) members to form government.  The first choice is the leader of the party who elected the most seats if he has the support of the majority of the House.  In a majority situation he obviously does, and even in a minority situation he typically does.  (Case in point, the recent throne speech was passed.)

The PM forms government by selecting members for cabinet posts.  Strictly speaking, members of the PM’s party who are not in cabinet are not, in fact, “the government”.  Only the PM and cabinet are the government.  The rest are just MP’s who represent their constituents and if they happen to be in the same party as the PM he can pretty much count on their support or the party may boot them out. (Examples include Garth Turner and Bill Casey)

The PM is not limited to his own party or even the other 307 House members to choose for cabinet.  He can persuade a member from another party to cross the floor (ie David Emerson in 2006), or he can choose a Senator (ie Michael Fortier in 2006) or he can form a coalition with another party with a share of cabinet seats (as currently proposed by the Liberals and NDP).

So in the situation where party A achieved the most seats, but does not have a majority, they still need the majority support of the House for their leader to be PM and for him to form government.  In other words, their leader still needs the support of members of at least one opposition party to be the PM.  This can be stated support OR it can be a coalition where the supporting party gets a certain number of cabinet seats.

If the leader of party A does not have sufficient support of the House, it is within the mandate of the Governor General to ask the leader of party B, the party with the next highest number of seats, if he has the majority support of the house to form government.  The answer could be yes to this question by the same means as before, either with stated support or via a coalition.

After the PM and government is selected and the Throne Speech has passed, he will remain the PM until a vote of non confidence or the loss of a general election.  In the case of a vote of non-confidence, the PM is obligated to instruct the GG that he does not have the confidence of the House and resign as PM.  This does not automatically trigger a new election as the GG then decides what to do.  Call an election or turn to the leader of the opposition (Party B who had the next largest number of seats) and ask, do you have the confidence of the House to form government?

All of this has nothing to do with the “will of the people”, and it certainly is not an overturning of the results of our recent election.  What is going on is not a technical loophole, but is actually operating in accordance with both the letter and the intent of our constitution.  Our election established 308 local representatives who will still be there representing their constituency, regardless of who is PM which party they are from.  The peoples “will” is expressed in who their local MP is, no more.

Now if anyone doesn’t like this system, then I suggest that you all find a group that support/demands change to what you want.  But it is a bit disingenuous to support our system of government until it operates exactly how it was designed and gives results you don’t want.

For my part, I am still a Green Party member.  We have not had an election yet that has given me the results that I want.  But I haven’t gone crying foul.  I’m just resolved to keep working on it.