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The Problem of “Minority” Government in Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Eugene Forsey
Eugene Forsey*
Affiliation:
Ottawa
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Extract

During the election of April, 1963, Liberal speeches and editorials tended to depict minority government (that is, government by a cabinet with less than half the seats in the House of Commons) as a nameless, faceless horror, the political fate that is worse than death. The authors of these productions are now hard at work trying to prove themselves wrong. They may not find it easy. For they face three deeply rooted popular notions on the subject; indeed, it was precisely because these notions were so widespread and so deeply rooted that the appeal to vote for a winner proved so powerful.

The first is that minority governments are altogether exceptional, abnormal, almost unheard of, except, of course, among benighted continental Europeans and other “lesser breeds without the Law.” This is simply not so. We have had relatively few minority governments, colonial, Dominion, or provincial, in Canada; but Britain, Australia, and New Zealand have had plenty. Britain, from 1834 to 1931, had sixteen, which held office for a total of thirty-two years out of the ninety-seven. In Australia, before federation, minority governments were the rule rather than the exception in New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania till the 1890's, and in Victoria till the 1880's (New South Wales often had three or four governments in a single Parliament, South Australia four or five), and there have been plenty of minority governments in the states since federation. The Commonwealth itself had nothing but minority governments (six of them) from its inception till 1909, and another as recently as 1941–43. Minority governments were the rule also in New Zealand till the 1890's (one Parliament saw six governments). So it can scarcely be maintained, rationally, that minority government is something monstrous and unnatural, foreign to the whole spirit of British parliamentary institutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 1964 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1956

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References

1 Peel's, 1834–35; Melbourne's, 1835–41; Russell's, 1846–47; Derby's, 1852; Palmerston's, 1855–57; Derby's, 1858–59; Derby's, 1866–68; Disraeli's, 1868; Salisbury's, 1885–86; Gladstone's, 1886; Salisbury's, 1886–92; Gladstone's 1892–94; Rosebery's, 1894–95; Asquith's, 1910–15; MacDonald's, 1924; and MacDonald's, 1929–31. SirJennings, Ivor, Cabinet Government, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1961), 31 Google Scholar, gives a list for the years 1839–1931, which does not include Palmerston's Government of 1855–57, though he says it would be “pedantic” to call it a coalition. It certainly would, as the Peelites left it within weeks of its formation; see Morley, John, Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Toronto: George N. Morang, 1903), I, 532, 539.Google Scholar Gladstone himself reckoned the Aberdeen coalition a minority Government … Ibid., I, 448–9.

2 See the official Year Books, Parliamentary Papers, Parliamentary Debates, and Legislative Journals of the Commonwealth and the colonies and States; the South Australian Blue Books on Ministries and Parliaments; Evatt, H. V., The King and His Dominion Governors (Oxford, 1936)Google Scholar; Todd, Alpheus, Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans Green, 1894)Google Scholar; Fenton, James, History of Tasmania (London: Macmillan, 1884)Google Scholar; Flanagan, Roderick, History of New South Wales (London: Sampson Low, 1862)Google Scholar; Hodder, Edwin, History of South Australia (London: Sampson Low, 1893)Google Scholar; Morrison, W. F., History of New South Wales (Bristol: Aldine Publishing Company, 1888)Google Scholar; Richards, Thomas, An Epitome of the Official History of New South Wales (Sydney: Government Printer, 1883)Google Scholar; Turner, H. G., History of the Colony of Victoria (London: Longmans Green, 1904)Google Scholar; SirDuffy, Charles Gavan, My Life in Two Hemispheres (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898)Google Scholar; Lyne, C. E., Life of Sir Henry Parkes (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897)Google Scholar; SirParkes, Henry, Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History (London: Longmans Green, 1892)Google Scholar; SirReid, George, My Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1917)Google Scholar; States-man's Yearbook.

3 See the official Year Books and the Parliamentary Debates of the Commonwealth; Evatt, The King and His Dominion Governors; Turner, H. G., The First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth (Melbourne: Mason, Firth and McCutcheon, 1911).Google Scholar

4 See the official Year Books, Parliamentary Debates, and Legislative Journals of New Zealand.

5 Journals of the Legislative Assembly, 1894, first session, 39–43, 45–54; second session, I passim; Prowse, D. W., History of Newfoundland, 2nd ed. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1896)Google Scholar; Sir Alfred B. Morine, “History of Newfoundland” (unpublished ms.).

6 Journals of the Legislative Assembly, 1900, 4–5, 61–2, 77–9; Sessional Papers (Canada), 1900, no. 174, pp. 3, 6, 8–9; Howay, F. W. and Scholefield, E. O. S., British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present (Vancouver: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1914), II, 507 Google Scholar; Canadian Parliamentary Guide, 1901, 408.

7 Journals of the Legislative Assembly, 1921, 198; 1922, 238–9; Canadian Annual Review, 1920, 748; 1922, 765–9; Keith, A. B., Journal of Comparative Legislation, 3rd series, VI, 136–7Google Scholar, and Responsible Government in the Dominions, 1928 ed. (Oxford), 178–9Google Scholar; Mali and Empire (Toronto), 03 18, 21, 22, and 24, 1922 Google Scholar; Manitoba Free Press (Winnipeg), same dates.

8 Canada Year Book, 1945, 71; 1946, 74; 1954, 63.

9 Ibid., 1954, 67; 1955, 85.

10 Canadian Annual Review, 1922, 232; 1923, 197; 1924, 237.

11 Richmond Hill speech, September 5, 1925, as reported in the Gazette (Montreal), Sept. 7, 1925.

12 Cabinet Government, 493–5.

13 For details, see Forsey, E. A., in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXIX, no. 3, 364–7.Google Scholar

14 The Times, Dec. 19, 1923.

15 Ibid.

16 Commons Debates (Canada), 1926, 5189-225; Keith, A. B., Speeches and Documents on the British Dominions, 1918–1931 (London: Humphrey Milford, 1932), 150, 153–4.Google Scholar

17 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 398, col. 1516.

18 Life, Feb. 18, 1952, 31; Globe and Mail (Toronto), 08 26, 1959, 7.Google Scholar

19 SirNicolson, Harold, King George V: His Life and Reign (London, 1952), 400.Google Scholar (“Labour” here is a misprint for “Liberal,” as the previous page, which names Baldwin and Asquith, makes clear. The leader of the Labour party was, of course, MacDonald himself.)

20 Mackenzie King, in his Richmond Hill speech of September 5, 1925, as reported in the Manitoba Free Press (Winnipeg) and the Ottawa Journal of Sept. 9, 1925; also in his official statement, Nov. 5, 1925, just after the election of October 29, quoted in Commons Debates (Canada), 1926–27, 439.

21 Note King's insistence, in 1926, that he had a right to a dissolution while a motion of censure against him and his government was still under debate. For a full discussion, see Forsey, , The Royal Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth (Oxford, 1943), 132–3, 144–6, 162–85.Google Scholar

22 Evatt, Note, The King and His Dominion Governors, 109.Google Scholar

23 Article 13 (2).

24 Quoted in Beauchesne, Arthur, Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, 3rd ed. (Toronto, 1943), 91.Google Scholar