The Queen’s Speech – brevity wins the day

I have previously written about the opening of a new parliament, or session of parliament, which begins with the Speech from the Throne, or the Queen’s Speech, as it is called in the United Kingdom.

A new session of Parliament opened 8 May 2013 in the UK, and HRH Queen Elizabeth delivered the Speech in the House of Lords. You can watch that event here, if interested.

One of the most striking differences between the Queen’s Speech and a Speech from the Throne here in Canada is the length of the speech. The Queen’s Speeches are remarkably brief compared to the Speeches delivered by Canadian Governors General.

Today’s speech totalled 845 words. The two previous speeches were of comparable length: the 9 May 2012 Speech ran 827 words, and the 25 May 2010 Speech was slightly longer, coming in at 901 words. But that is perhaps understandable – that speech marked the opening of the current parliament following the May 2010 general election rather than the start of a new session.

Recent Canadian Speeches from the Throne have been significantly longer. The most recent, delivered 3 June 2011, following the May 2011 general election and opening the current Parliament, was 3,677 words long. There were three Throne Speeches delivered during the previous Parliament. The first, which opened the 40th Parliament, delivered on 19 November 2008, totalled 4,218 words.  The Throne Speech to open the 2nd session of the 40th Parliament (26 January 2009) was a bit of an anomaly. It was only 749 words long. The Throne Speech to open the 3rd session, however, was a whopping 5,978 words (3 March 2010).

What we find is that the past three UK Queen’s Speeches average 858 words, while the average for a Canadian Speech from the Throne is 3,655 words – over four times longer.

The Queen’s Speech is normally a fairly specific and straight-forward overview of a dozen or so pieces of legislation the Government intends to bring forward in the new session:

A Bill will be introduced to reduce the burden of excessive regulation on businesses. A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property.

A draft Bill will be published establishing a simple set of consumer rights to promote competitive markets and growth.

My government will introduce a Bill that closes the Audit Commission.

My government will continue to invest in infrastructure to deliver jobs and growth for the economy.

Legislation will be introduced to enable the building of the ‘High Speed Two’ railway line, providing further opportunities for economic growth in many of Britain’s cities.

My government will continue with legislation to update energy infrastructure and to improve the water industry.

Canadian Speeches from the Throne tend to be far more generalised and include a lot of context – or window-dressing, as we see from the 2011 Speech from the Throne:

Our Government has made Canada’s North a cornerstone of its agenda. The strongest expression of our sovereignty comes through presence and actions, not words. Our Government will continue to exercise leadership in the stewardship of northern lands and waters. It is also committed to working with the Northwest Territories and the private sector to complete the Dempster Highway—by linking Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk—thereby realizing Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s vision of connecting Canada by road from sea to sea to sea.

Canada’s natural environment shapes our national identity, our health and our prosperity. Our Government has expanded protected lands and marine areas to an unprecedented extent, so that current and future generations can continue to enjoy them. In this, the 100th anniversary year of our national parks system, our Government will create significant new protected areas. It will work with provincial, regional, municipal, Aboriginal and community stakeholders toward establishing an urban national park in the Rouge Valley of eastern Toronto. Looking to the future, our Government will engage a broad range of stakeholders on the development of a National Conservation Plan, to move our conservation objectives forward and better connect all Canadians with nature.

Our Government is committed to developing Canada’s extraordinary resource wealth in a way that protects the environment. It will support major new clean energy projects of national or regional significance, such as the planned Lower Churchill hydroelectricity project in Atlantic Canada. It will engage the provinces, territories and industry on ways to improve the regulatory and environmental assessment process for resource projects, while ensuring meaningful consultation with affected communities, including Aboriginal communities.

In the UK, a session of Parliament runs from the State Opening of Parliament, which in the past was usually in November through to the following November. However, in 2010 the Leader of the House announced the Government’s intention to move towards five 12-month sessions over a Parliament, beginning and ending in the spring. Now, Parliament is prorogued every spring, usually some time near the end of April, and the new session opens in early May. Canadian parliamentary sessions are of an indeterminate length, and it is the Government which decides when to prorogue one session and begin a new one. For example, the current Parliament, the 41st, began on 2 June 2011, after the general election in May, and is still in its first session almost two full years later. This factor perhaps makes it easier (and necessary) for the UK government to outline its legislative agenda more specifically, since it knows that, realistically, there are only so many bills which can be dealt with in a one-year period. In Canada, since the Government doesn’t have to adhere to a preset tradition of one-year sessions, it can be much vaguer in outlining its legislative goals.

Personally, I must say that I prefer the UK approach. Speeches from the Throne are notoriously tedious to listen to. The much shorter and to the point Queen’s Speeches make it easier to determine if the Government has achieved what it set out to do by the time the session ends. The vagueness of Canadian Throne Speeches make it much harder to follow if the Government is staying on the course it set out – since it’s not exactly clear what that course is.

 

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Faint signs of democratic awakenings

I have written a number of posts on how whipped Canadian backbench MPs are when compared to their counterparts in other parliaments. In recent weeks, it would seem that some backbenchers have maybe had enough of this situation.

One MP raised a point of privilege to argue that prevented by his party whip from delivering a statement in the House during “Statements by Members”, a 15-min period each day during which backbenchers can deliver one-minute statements on matters of international, national or local concern. As per the Standing Orders, any MP can be recognized by the Speaker to speak during this time, but, in practice, the Speaker is guided by lists provided by the respective party whips. The Member, Mr. Warawa, appealed to the Speaker that in being removed from his side’s list last Thursday, his privileges as an MP were breached.

For a detailed overview of the situation, I will refer you to this guide prepared by Aaron Wherry of Macleans. Mr. Wherry’s guide includes a multitude of links to other posts he and others have written on the issue. A number of MPs spoke up in support of Mr. Warawa’s point of privilege, and the Speaker delivered his ruling on the matter last week, which you can read in full here. The Speaker did not find that there was a prima facie case of privilege but reminded backbenchers that the Speaker is guided by the lists, not bound to them, and if they want to speak, they need to “seek the floor”, which they are free to do at any time.

For people unfamiliar with the Canadian House of Commons, it is important to understand that the issue of lists of which MPs will speak is not limited to Members’ Statements. The party whips provide lists to the Speaker for Question Period, for debates on bills – in sort – for virtually every single item of business in the House. And it isn’t simply a matter of these lists largely determining which MPs will be able to speak in the House, if they are on the list, they are often also told exactly what they will say when they do get the floor. They are given scripted questions to ask during Question Period, which means that rather than question the government and hold it to account, questions from government backbenchers are used to attack and question opposition party policy, or to give the government an opportunity to promote a policy or initiative. And sometimes, the question will manage to do both:

Mr. John Carmichael (Don Valley West, CPC): Mr. Speaker, while the NDP members continue to bend and twist Canada’s rich military history to suit their far left leanings, our government is committed to commemorating Canadian veterans and their accomplishments.

In January our government proudly marked 2013 as the year of the Korean War veteran, and today the Minister of Veterans Affairs and the Minister of National Defence made yet another great announcement. Would the Minister of Veterans Affairs please update this House on how we are continuing to recognize Canada’s great accomplishments during the Korean War?

Hon. Steven Blaney (Minister of Veterans Affairs and Minister for La Francophonie, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the member for Don Valley West is right. They were young and reckless. Along with more than 15 countries with the United Nations 60 years ago, they fought in Korea for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law against communism. Today, the Minister of National Defence and I presented a certificate of recognition to our great Canadian Korean War veterans to show our deepest gratitude and recognition for their many sacrifices. I thank our Korean War veterans. Thank you very much.

The Speaker concluded his ruling thusly:

Even so, as Speaker I cannot exercise my discretion as to which Member to recognize during Statements by Members or at any other time of the sitting day if only one Member is rising to be recognized.
As previously mentioned, due to an over-reliance on lists, more often than should be the case, even those Members on the list do not always rise to be recognized.

Were the Chair to be faced with choices of which Member to recognize at any given time, then of course the Chair would exercise its discretion. But that has not happened thus far during Statements by Members, nor for that matter, during Question Period. Until it does, the Chair is not in a position to unilaterally announce or dictate a change in our practices. If Members want to be recognized, they will have to actively demonstrate that they wish to participate. They have to rise in their places and seek the floor.

In the meantime, I will continue to be guided by the lists that are provided to me and, when and if Members are competing for the floor, will exercise my authority to recognize Members, not in a cavalier or uninformed manner but, rather, in a balanced way that respects both the will of the House and the rights of individual Members.

While this should strike most as common sense – if a Member wants to be recognized by the Chair, he or she needs to stand in their place to indicate to the Speaker that they want to speak – what is surprising (also shocking and terribly saddening) is that some MPs apparently didn’t even know that they could do this. As Laura Ryckewaert writes in “Former House Speaker Fraser calls Scheer’s ruling ‘very important,’ but another expert expects MPs won’t do much with ruling” ($):

Mr. Scheer’s ruling isn’t groundbreaking, and he has instead highlighted a pre-existing right that was forgotten over time by MPs but Mr. Warawa and Mr. Chong said they hadn’t previously realized they had the right to stand to be recognized by the Speaker during statements or questions.

Another MP, Mr. Rathgeber, told reports that he planned to take advantage of this new-found right and added that “he thought there would be a ‘transition’ as “members will have to adjust to being able to speak without having been approved, being put on a list.”"

Many might wonder how this dire state of affairs came to be. Peter Loewen explains the situation quite well in this article from the Ottawa Citizen. Mr. Loewen writes that prior to 1970, party labels did not appear on ballots, only the names of the candidates running in each constituency. The candidates were representatives of a party, but the situation wasn’t regulated and at times, there could be two candidates claiming to represent the same party. Parliament decided that reform was required and the solution adopted “was to have party leaders sign off on candidacies, officially identifying their party’s candidates.”

This solution created a new problem – the party leaders realized that this gave them enormous power over their MPs:

Since party leaders sign off on candidates, they can also refuse candidates by declining to sign their nomination papers. There is no legal mechanism for locally-selected candidates to overcome this prerogative. Sitting MPs are subject to this signature at every election. As a consequence, MPs serve not only at the pleasure of their electorate but also of their leader.

That MPs work beneath the thumbs of their leaders would be less objectionable if they had some counterweight. In other Westminster-style democracies, the counterweight is obvious: party leaders serve at the pleasure of their caucus.

In Canada, we have delegated the right to remove leaders to party members, that small class of Canadians who pay a pittance each year to carry a party’s card. From time to time, a small minority of them will trek off to a convention centre or a hockey arena to decide whether to renew their leader’s mandate.

They are accountable to no one. It should be no surprise, then, that the leaders they affirm are equally free of accountability.

The neutering of our MPs as free-thinking, independent representatives begins with their nominations and it ends with their inability to keep their leaders in check. In the meantime, the media and the punditocracy do what they can to remind MPs of their diminished role.

Since the ruling, some MPs have tried to stand and catch the Speaker’s eye to be recognized. Some have succeeded, others haven’t. A former House of Commons committee clerk, Thomas Hall, is quoted in the Ryckewaert article as saying that he doesn’t expect this to last: “If the whip wants to, he can crack down on that, he still has the power to discipline Members who disobey him.” In the same article, Professor Lori Turnbull (political science, Dalhousie University) says some MPs would consider this new-found freedom “career suicide”:

If you’re an MP and if you’re thinking, ‘Okay, I want to be on that particular committee, or I want that particular diplomatic post when I retire, or I want to say on [current Prime Minister] Harper’s good side’ or whatever it is, then you’re not going to be the guy who stands up in the House with the explicit knowledge that the Prime Minister and the party whip think you should sit down and shut up.

Still, perhaps the radical idea that MPs have the right to stand up of their own initiative and speak in the House might spark an interest in exploring other ways by which backbenchers might regain some power in the House. There is still a very long way to go before one can speak of real democratic reform, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

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Politicians still don’t understand the internet

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post outlining how far too many politicians simply don’t understand the internet in general, and social media in particular. Sadly, the situation hasn’t improved much.

Recently, a point of privilege was raised in the provincial legislature of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, over one Member’s alleged membership in an anti-government group on Facebook. Several comments on the group’s page involved death threats against the Premier of the province. In his point of privilege, the Government House Leader noted that the Facebook group had a membership list and among the listed members was the MHA for St. John’s Centre. The Government House Leader argued that online, as in public, one would join a group “because you support the values and you support the objectives of the group and you support what the people of the group are doing.” He added:

I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the group and the members of that group of which there is a member sitting in this House today, who is endorsing and supporting that – threats to her [the premier's] life and threats to her home, implicit in that are threats to her family, to her children and her grandchildren. Mr. Speaker, that, in my view, is reprehensible and totally, totally unacceptable.

The Government House Leader finished by calling on the House to suspend the Member for St. John’s Centre because of her public support for and participation in the Facebook group and its activities.

The Member accused was not given an opportunity to speak. The Speaker recessed briefly, then returned with a ruling in which he reminded Members that should they choose to engage with social media, they had a responsibility “to use them wisely” and that they should hold themselves “to a higher standard than would be accepted and acceptable for the general public.”

He did admit that, upon examining the Facebook pages in question, while the Member for St. John’s Centre was listed as a member, it was impossible to determine “how this participation was initiated and accepted” nor was there any evidence that she made any comments on the site that would connect her to the offensive statements:

It cannot be clearly and unequivocally stated that the Member for St. John’s Centre was herself carrying out an implied or actual threat; therefore there is no prima facie case of privilege.

Despite this fact, the Speaker still found a contempt against the House and asked the Member to apologize, which she refused to do: “I will not apologize for something that I have not done. I am sorry; I cannot apologize to the House.” She was asked twice more times to apologize and refused to do so each time, forcing the Speaker to suspend her for the remainder of the day.

Then, a week later, the Speaker in turn apologized to the Member, noting that after having the finer points of how Facebook actually works explained to him – notably that individuals can “find themselves attached to a group without their explicit consent”, his finding of contempt was “erroneous”.

This is not the first ruling the Speaker has made on a matter involving social media. Almost a year ago, a similar point of privilege was raised in the House of Assembly, this time over a comment made on Twitter. A Member had tweeted the previous night, after the House had adjourned, that another Member – whom he did not identify – had lied in the House during that day’s debate.

As in the case above, the Speaker heard the point of privilege and then ruled immediately. The ruling was somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the Speaker seemed to accept, or at least recognize, that comments made outside of the House are beyond the Speaker’s power to act on. He stated that had an accusation of lying been made in the House during debate, he would have immediately demanded that it be withdrawn. If the Member had made the comments while outside the House, perhaps on an open line radio program, it would have been regrettable, but the Speaker would not have been able to act on it since it was outside of his jurisdiction – in other words, not a proceeding of parliament. However, the fact that the tweet was made after the House had adjourned seemed to be the only factor preventing the Speaker from acting:

had this accusation of lying been sent while the House was sitting so as to escape being sanctioned for unparliamentary language while still making the accusation, I believe it would be a prima facie case of privilege.

In other words, had the tweet been sent while the House was sitting, even if the member himself made it from outside the Chamber, the Speaker would have found a breach of privilege, meaning he would have considered the tweet a proceeding of parliament.

A number of Speakers in other jurisdictions have been called upon to rule on comments made on social media, or have issued statements on the use of social media by Members. In these cases, the general consensus is that anything said on social media is not part of proceedings of parliament, therefore the Chair should not be expected to rule on allegations of improper conduct on social media. Also, comments made on social media are not protected by parliamentary privilege, consequently, Members should conduct themselves accordingly.

The Newfoundland and Labrador social media incidents are reminiscent of a Twitter-related incident which occurred in the Legislative Assembly of the Australian state of Victoria in November 2011. In that instance, a Member had made critical comments about the Speaker on Twitter, and those tweets were then brought to the Speaker’s attention. The Speaker demanded that the Member in question apologize, but wouldn’t specify what the apology was for because he didn’t want to read the offending comments into the official record. The Member consequently refused to apologize. The ensuing debate was quite spirited and raised some important points, including:

  • If the Speaker ruled on a comment made outside of the chamber, that would set a precedent;
  • There weren’t any standing orders or previous Speaker’s rulings what would support the Speaker’s position. Forcing members to apologize every time they offended another Member on social media would set a dangerous precedent;
  • The Speaker couldn’t seek an apology since the comment wasn’t made in the House. Had it been made in the House, he could ask the Member to withdraw the comment;
  • Demanding a Member apologize for something without specifying what the Member must apologize for would again set a precedent;
  • Without knowing the seriousness of the alleged insult (since the Speaker wouldn’t explain), how could appropriate sanctions against the Member be applied?

The matter ended up referred to the Legislative Assembly’s Standing Orders committee, which released an interesting report in December 2012 on the use of social media in the Legislative Assembly and reflections on the Speaker, which you can read here.

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BC 2013 Political Party Platform Comparisons

Many people are now looking for a site comparing the platforms of the political parties contesting the upcoming British Columbia election to be held on 14 May 2013.

This blog cannot engage in a discussion of the policies of political parties, either at the provincial or federal level. However, as it has done in the past, in the case of both federal and other provincial and territorial elections, it can refer you to other sites that can do that. The list will be updated as needed.

BC political party platform comparisons:

Other useful election-related links:

Elections BC

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On by-elections

A very interesting difference exists between Canada and the United Kingdom when it comes to the matter of calling by-elections.

A by-election occurs when a seat in the House becomes vacant furing the course of a parliament because the MP has resigned, passed away, or the incumbent becomes ineligible to continue in office. When this happens, an election is called in that constituency only, to fill the seat. It is possible to hold more than one by-elections on the same day if there are several vacancies to fill.

By-election procedure to fill a vacancy in the Canadian House of Commons

Under the Parliament of Canada Act, when a seat in the House is vacant, the Speaker of the House of Commons informs the Chief Electoral Officer by means of a Speaker’s warrant. If the Speaker is absent, or if it is the Speaker’s seat that is vacant, two members of the House of Commons may address the warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer.

After receiving the warrant, section 57 of the Canada Elections Act authorizes the Governor in Council to fix the date on which the Chief Electoral Officer is to issue the writ. The date of issuance must fall between the 11th and 180th days after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the warrant from the Speaker (or the two members of the House). The Governor in Council also fixes the date for election day, which cannot be earlier than 36 days after the Chief Electoral Officer issues the writ. (source: Elections Canada)

The “Governor in Council” referred to above is the Governor General, acting on the advice of the federal cabinet. In other words, it is actually the Cabinet (and in reality, the Prime Minister) which decides the date for the issuance of the writ. The earliest date possible for a by-election is 11 days after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the warrant from the Speaker. The latest date possible is 180 days – in other words, six months – after the warrant is received. The actual number of days the seat might remain vacant can exceed that, however, since the official countdown begins only after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the Speaker’s warrant announcing the vacancy, and not when the seat is actually vacated by the MP. As well, the date for the by-election cannot be earlier than 36 days after the CEO issues the writ. The Parliament of Canada Act (section 28) states that when a vacancy occurs:

“the Speaker of the House shall, without delay, (…) address a warrant of the Speaker to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a writ for the election of a member to fill the vacancy.”

And going by the chart below, the Speaker’s warrants are issued very soon after the seat becomes vacant. The delay can occur at the next stage in the process – waiting for the Governor in Council – the Prime Minister – to choose an actual date for the by-election to be held. Sometimes, the PM won’t delay to announce the date. In other cases, they may put off the decision as long as they possibly can.

By-election procedure to fill a vacancy in the UK House of Commons

Traditionally the Chief Whip of the political party whose MP held the vacant seat will begin the procedure for a by-election. This is known as ‘moving the Writ’ and takes the form of a motion in the House of Commons. This isn’t always how things proceed, however. For example, in the case of the 2010 by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth, a seat which Labour had won in the 2010 election, it was the Liberal Democrats who moved the writ. The Labour candidate had been stripped of his seat by the courts which declared his victory void because he had knowingly made false statements attacking his Liberal Democrat opponent’s personal character during the 2010 general election.

A new Writ is moved within three months of the vacancy occurring. There have been a few instances of seats remaining vacant longer than six months before a by-election was called. Seats have also been left vacant towards the end of a Parliament to be filled at the general election. If there are several vacant seats then a number of by-elections can take place on the same day. (source: UK Parliament website)

Because the timing of a by-election is decided by the party which held the seat when the vacancy occurs, by-elections in the UK tend to occur quite quickly since the party is anxious to see if it can hold the seat.

The following charts look at by-elections called in the current parliaments in both Canada and the UK.

By-elections Canada, current parliament (since May 2011)

 

Constituency Date of Vacancy Date of Notice of Vacancy Date of Writ of By-election Date of By-election # of days seat vacant
Labrador 14 Mar 2013 19 Mar 2013 7 Apr 2013 13 May 2013 60
Victoria 31 Aug 2012 6 Sep 2012 21 Oct 2012 26 Nov 2012 87
Durham 31 Jul 2012 1 Aug 2012 21 Oct 2012 26 Nov 2012 118
Calgary-Centre 30 May 2012 12 Jun 2012 21 Oct 2012 26 Nov 2012 180
Toronto-Danforth 22 Aug 2011 30 Aug 2011 6 Feb 2012 19 Mar 2012 210
Average # of days seat vacant 131

UK By-elections, current parliament (since May 2010)

 

Constituency Date of Vacancy Date of Writ Date of By-election # of days seat vacant
South Shields 12 Apr 2013 15 Apr 2013 2 May 2013 20
Mid-Ulster 2 Jan 2013 11 Feb 2013 7 Mar 2013 64
Eastleigh 5 Feb 2013 7 Feb 2013 28 Feb 2013 23
Croydon-North 29 Sep 2012 8 Nov 2012 29 Nov 2012 61
Middlesborough 13 Oct 2012 8 Nov 2012 29 Nov 2012 47
Rotherham 5 Nov 2012 8 Nov 2012 29 Nov 2012 24
Cardiff South and Penarth 22 Oct 2012 23 Oct 2012 15 Nov 2012 24
Corby 29 Aug 2012 23 Oct 2012 15 Nov 2012 78
Manchester Central 22 Oct 2012 23 Oct 2012 15 Nov 2012 23
Bradford West 2 Mar 2012 6 Mar 2012 29 Mar 2012 27
Feltham and Heston 10 Nov 2011 25 Nov 2011 15 Dec 2011 35
Inverclyde 9 May 2011 8 Jun 2011 30 Jun 2011 52
Belfast West 26 Jan 2011 17 May 2011 9 Jun 2011 134
Leicester South 1 Apr 2011 6 Apr 2011 5 May 2011 34
Barnsley Central 8 Feb 2011 9 Feb 2011 3 Mar 2011 23
Oldham East and Saddleworth 5 Nov 2010 16 Dec 2011 13 Jan 2011 69
Average # of days seat vacant 46

If you’d like to see how the moving of a Writ plays out, you can watch the procedure for the by-election in Eastleigh from 7 February 2013. It doesn’t take very long – about a minute (it ends at the 9:35 mark).

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On the West Lothian Question

Last month, Commission on the Consequences of Devolution for the House of Commons (the McKay Commission) released its report, which you can read here. The Commission had been appointed in January 2012 and was asked to consider:

how the House of Commons might deal with legislation which affects only part of the United Kingdom, following the devolution of certain legislative powers to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly of Wales.

In other words, the Commission was looking into the matter of the “West Lothian Question.” The Parliament.uk website explains the West Lothian Question this way:

Named after Tam Dalyell, MP for West Lothian, who raised the question of the participation of MPs in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the UK Parliament after devolution. In a debate on devolution to Scotland and Wales on 14 November 1977, Mr Dalyell said: For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on British politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

For Canadian readers, imagine a scenario where education policy isn’t a provincial responsibility in Canada, but under federal jurisdiction. It is the Government of Canada and the Parliament of Canada which decide all policy affecting every aspect of education across the country – from curriculum to tuition fees. Then, after years of negotiation, one province, say Quebec, is given full control over education matters in that province, while the other provinces still see Ottawa deciding education policy for them. Quebec MPs still get to vote on pieces of education legislation affecting the rest of the country, but that have no impact within the province of Quebec itself, but MPs from the rest of Canada, and the Government of Canada, have no say in any aspect of education policy within Quebec. What if the government one day decides to significantly increase tuition fees across the country – triples them, while in Quebec, the provincial government actually does away with tuition fees. The tuition fee policy is very controversial, and even a number of government backbenchers rebel against the policy (it’s a fantasy scenario – play along). The tuition fee increase passes, but only by a handful of votes. People soon realize that if the Quebec MPs hadn’t voted, the tuition fee increase would have been defeated and many start to question if MPs from Quebec should have a right to vote on policies that don’t affect their province at all, especially very controversial ones such as a massive tuition fee hike.

This is a highly generalized example of the West Lothian Question in the UK. There is a growing perception among MPs and voters that MPs from England proper should have a more decisive role in making laws for England in policy fields that have been devolved to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies. As the McKay Commission explains in its report,

The West Lothian Question is a consequence of the introduction of “asymmetrical devolution arrangements that extend to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but not to England. The issues it raises are a constant presence in post-devolution UK politics as MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales routinely vote on legislation that wholly or mainly affects England alone. But the political resonance of the West Lothian Question is at its greatest when it is possible for the majority opinion among MPs from Englan don a piece of England-specific legislation to be overruled by a majority of all UK MPs, including those from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The Commission does point out that instances when a majority of MPs from England is overruled by the UK-wide majority are in actual fact extremely rare. They identify three such scenarios – two happened only rarely, and one never has. Since WWI, the party or coalition forming the UK Government has almost always had a majority in England, as well as in the UK as a whole. Only during two short-lived parliaments was this not the case. Another example would be situations where a government with a majority of MPs both from England and across the UK as a whole suffers a parliamentary rebellion among its England MPs (this does happen in the UK, unlike Canada). In such an event, a controversial piece of legislation may pass because of support from MPs outside of England. The Commission identified two examples of this which occurred under Labour – votes on the introduction of foundation hospitals in 2003 and the introduction of university top-up fees in England only in 2004. In these two cases, a good number of Labour MPs from England rebelled and voted against their government, but Labour MPs from Scotland and Wales ensured that the government maintained its majority. The last scenario in which the will of the majority in England could be overruled would be if a party had a clear majority in England, but not in the UK as a whole and forms a minority government. In that event, the opposition could frustrate the UK Government’s legislative intentions for England by mobilising the votes of MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. However, this scenario has never occurred. (McKay Commission Report, pp. 12-13)

Because the above scenarios happen only very rarely, or not at all, the Commission approached the West Lothian Question in a broader sense: “that of non-English MPs voting on English laws, whatever the majority relationship in the House of Commons.” And because this is a wider set of concerns about the “balance and stability of teh UK’s territorial constitution”, it can be described as an “English Question”.

Essentially, because of devolution, more and more legislation before the UK Parliament applies to England only (or England and Wales). This reality will only increase over time. The continued devolution of powers to the other national assemblies – for example, a referendum held in March 2011 in Wales established full legislative powers for the Welsh National Assembly in 20 policy fields, and debates on further devolution are ongoing, while Scotland will have a referendum on independence in 2014. The problem, as identified by the McKay Commission, is that the House of Commons has not adapted to this reality:

The House of Commons does not differentiate its mode of operation for English as compared with UK-wide matters. It lacks a capacity to focus directly on England just at the point when more of its work deals with English matters. In the absence of change in the way the House of Commons works, the consequence – clearly unintended, but nonetheless important- may be to impede the voicing of any distinctively English concerns, or perceived concerns, that exist on wholly or mainly English matters.

Recommendations

The Commission made the following recommendations:

  • Adopt the following constitutional principle for England (and for England-and-Wales): Decisions taken in the Commons which have a separate and distinct effect for England (or England-and-Wales) should normally be taken only with the consent of a majority of MPs sitting for constituencies in England (or England-and-Wales).
  • That principle should be clearly set out in a resolution of the House of Commons, and House procedure should be changed to encourage MPs to follow this approach.
  • A range of procedural changes is suggested, all of which would allow the English voice to be heard. Some of them involve committees on bills, with majorities reflecting the party balance in England (or England-and-Wales).  Others take the form of motions on the floor of the House.  They are not a single package but a menu from which choices can be made to suit the circumstances of a particular bill.
  • A select committee on Devolution should be appointed, which would (among other things) assist the House to hold UK ministers to account for their responsibilities in connection with devolution and their relations with the devolved administrations.
  • No MPs would be prevented from voting on any bill, and the right of the House as a whole to make final decisions would be preserved. However, there would also be scope for additional roles for MPs from England (or England-and-Wales).

These are explained in more detail in the report itself, which you can consult via the link posted above.

It should be noted that there has been some criticism of the fact that while the West Lothian Question is very much a parliamentary issue affecting parliamentary procedure, the McKay Commission was set up by the government, by-passing parliament’s own select committees. See for example this post from the Constitution Unit:

Sadly, its newly-published report confirms this executive-centred approach to parliamentary reform.  The key section entitled ‘next steps’ (paras 248-9) contains phrases like “We envisage that the Government would first make an assessment of our proposals and put before the House..” and “When the House has expressed its views, we suggest that the Government should move for a select committee to advise the House on the details..”

…

Presumably Parliament is expected, as usual, to sit back quietly and wait for its executive masters to work out how it should operate.  The idea that one of the Commons’ select committees dealing with House matters (given the current Political & Constitutional Reform Committee’s inquiry into the ‘Wright Committee reforms’, we currently have 2 of them, ie it and Procedure Committee) should do a brisk inquiry into the subject of WLQ and the McKay Report, independently of Government’s own deliberations, is presumably far too revolutionary for the current House.  Ditto for some sort of initiative of this sort by the Speaker.

Or perhaps they will surprise us all?

The House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee did touch on the English Question in its recent report entitled “Do we need a constitutional convention for the UK?” In the section headed “The elephant in the room: England“, the committee discusses the English Question at some length, and concludes with the following recommendation:

76. We recommend that the “English Question” be addressed without delay. Of all the tectonic plates within the Union, it is England which most needs to be lubricated and adjusted to the new reality of an effective Union, within a key framework of national competences. The Government should now, with all urgency, create a forum, or pre-convention, for the people of England to discuss if, and how, they wish to follow in the footsteps of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and access substantial devolved powers, clearly defined in statute, for their local communities. The Government should consider whether such a forum might be conducted before a UK-wide constitutional convention and involve representatives from all parts of England.

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Comments issue resolved

Thanks to theme designer Ellen at Elmastudio, the Disqus commenting system is up and functional once again. Thank you to everyone for your patience as I continue to fine-tune this new theme.

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The preferential ballot favours the party with the most first preference votes

I have written several posts looking at the growing popularity of the preferential ballot/the alternative vote (AV) here in Canada – see this recent one, for example. I even attempted a redo of the 2011 Canadian federal election using the preferential ballot rather than our current FPTP. As I explained in that post, and in others, the big problem in attempting to forecast how the election would have played out using AV was the absence of data concerning voters’ preferences. Some polling firms would (and still do) regularly ask people which party was their second choice, but no one ever looked at voters’ potential 3rd, 4th, etc. choices.

However, a new poll by Abacus Data has done just that. According to Eric Grenier, in this article in the Globe and Mail, the poll asked respondents to rank seven parties from 1 to 7 (in other words, it used full preferential rather than optional preferential). I cannot find this data on the Abacus website. Mr. Grenier examined the numbers and posits that using a preferential ballot “would limit the ability of the Conservatives to win elections”:

With a preferential ballot, however, the Conservatives would come out further ahead. They would lead in 147 ridings on the first ballot (after distributing the marginal support for the smaller parties), compared to only 108 for the New Democrats, 76 for the Liberals, four for the Bloc Québécois, and three for the Greens (primarily due to an anomalous result in the poll in Atlantic Canada).

The Conservatives would have majority support in 60 ridings and win those automatically, while the NDP would win 23 seats on the first ballot and the Liberals 11. But that Tory advantage would disappear once the instant run-off was conducted.

The Conservatives would lose their first ballot lead in 30 ridings, and be reduced to only 117. The New Democrats would move ahead in 18 more seats and take 126, while the Liberals would win 17 more ridings and increase their total to 93. The Greens would hold on to two of the three seats in which they led, while the Bloc Québécois would lose all four.

I am not entirely certain how he comes to that conclusion. The last paragraph quoted above is particularly confusing to me.

Despite Mr. Grenier’s assertions at the outset of the article that the preferential ballot “is used in many jurisdictions around the world”, the only really comparable example available to us is Australia. Full preferential (where voters have to rank every single candidate on their ballot for the vote to count) is used at the federal level to elect the House of Representatives, and in some states, while a couple of states use optional preferential, where voters can choose to rank as many or as few candidates as they want. Indeed, many opt to rank only one candidate and optional preferential becomes a de facto FPTP ballot. This is what happened when AV was used in some provinces here in Canada in the past.

What Mr. Grenier seems to overlook is that the preferential ballot, in particular optional preferential, always favours the party which receives the most first preference votes – at least going by Australia’s long history with this form of voting. Grenier rightly notes that the Conservatives “would have majority support in 60 ridings and win those automatically”. However, things are a bit more complicated after that. Going by Australia’s experience, Conservative candidates would not, as Grenier posits, “lose their first ballot lead in 30 ridings” based on second preferences. It all depends on how close those Conservative candidates are to the 50%+1 needed to win the seat under AV. The closer they are to that mark, the fewer votes transfers they require. Consequently, a Conservative candidate with 45% of the vote on the first ballot count, would most likely still win the seat because they need far fewer votes to boost them over the 50% mark. Even if they were further from the 50% target, say at 40%, but the 2nd place candidate was well behind, say at 30%, the Conservative would still most likely win. Only in instances where two candidates were quite literally neck and neck on the first ballot count would the outcome be up in the air.

Readers interested in preferential voting should regularly read Antony Green’s Election Blog. Green is an Australian elections expert who blogs about both federal and state elections in that country, which, I reiterate, is really the only jurisdction at all comparable to Canada which uses the preferential ballot. As Green explains in this post:

At the 2010 Federal election, 64 of the 150 seats were won by a candidate with a majority on first preferences, and a further 75 won by the highest polling candidate at the start of the count after the further distribution of preferences. Optional preferential voting would have had little impact on these 139 contests.

However, in the 11 contests where the candidate leading on first preferences did not win, optional preferential voting could have changed the result.

(…)

The lesson here is that optional preferential voting always advantages the party with the highest first preference vote.

In other words, in the 2010 federal election in Australia, a majority of seats (139 out of 150) were won by the candidate who was ahead after the first count. Sixty-four were won by a majority on the first ballot, and 75 were won on subsequent ballots – by the candidate who’d been in first place on the first count. That is using full preferential. Only in 11 instances did the candidate who’d been leading on the first ballot fail to actually win the seat. Had optional preferential been used instead, in only 3 cases would the candidate in the lead after the first ballot have failed to win.

It is good that a polling firm here in Canada has finally started to explore voters’ preferences beyond their 1st and 2nd choices, but I don’t think Mr. Grenier fully understands how AV tends to play out – at least based on what happens in Australia.

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Apologies for the lack of posting

I recently underwent laser eye surgery and using the computer is still difficult. Things are slowly improving every day, however.

Also, I am looking at a new theme for this blog, one that will work better with mobile devices and tablets, etc., and so expect some experimentation in coming days as I test out new layouts.

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Proposal for elected Commons committee chairs

For the past three years now, this blog has explored some of the more interesting developments in parliamentary procedure in various jurisdictions (primarily the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Regular readers know that I am a big fan of many of the reforms introduced in the UK House of Commons in 2010, as per the recommendations of the Wright report.

One of those reforms involved select committee chairs being elected by the whole House, as I’ve blogged about in detail in other posts. For example, back in April 2011, I wrote one of my Fixing Ottawa posts, this one focused on Committees, wherein I explained in detail how UK select committee chairs and members are now elected. In another post written later that same year, I discussed the findings of the UK House of Commons Procedure committee’s report reviewing the elections held, for the first time, in most cases, to fill various positions in the House, including, of course, the election of committee chairs and members. If you read either or both of those posts, you will see that I am quite fond of this reform, and would very much like to see it adopted here in Canada.

Consequently, I was very pleased to read, via Kady O’Malley’s Inside Politics Blog, that a Conservative backbench MP, Brad Trost, will be putting forward a motion proposing something very similar to what the UK House of Commons – that is, have the House elect committee chairs via a preferential ballot.

As Kady O’Malley points out, if this motion passes, “it would be binding, as it would constitute an instruction to the House.”

If you are interested in parliamentary reform, I would strongly encourage you to contact your MP and ask them to support this motion. It has made a huge different in the UK with committees becoming far more independent, less partisan, and generally more effective.

Further reading

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