What’s what in Parliament: the Bar of the House
On April 17, 2002, angry with the outcome of a vote on his private Member’s bill, a Canadian Member of Parliament grabbed hold of the Mace. This action was considered to be in contempt of the House and a prima facie breach of privilege was found. A week later, the House adopted a motion calling [...]
Quote of the day
To those who say that an elected House of Lords will be stronger, I reply, “Good.” It will be good for the House of Commons and good for Governments of any stripe to face more effective and assertive scrutiny, and, where necessary, revision of their legislation from the House of Lords. That is not the [...]
Members leaving the House
As similar as are the UK and Canadian parliamentary systems, there are some very interesting differences. One of these is the fact that British MPs can’t resign their seat the same way Canadian (and Australian and New Zealand) MPs can, as I blogged about in this post. Similar to that, Lords can’t resign either. Lords [...]
Quote of the day
If a Second Chamber dissents from the First, it is mischievous; if it agrees, it is superfluous. – Abbé Sieyès as quoted in S.D. Bailey, The Future of the House of Lords [The Hansard Society, London, 1954], p. 17 Related Posts:Quote of the dayQuote of the dayQuote of the dayQuote of the dayQuote of the [...]
On debating bills (Canada)
(Note: this post is not intended as a detailed explanation of the legislative process. For an explanation of how a bill becomes law (in Canada), please click here. For an explanation of how a bill becomes law in the UK, click here.) For a bill to become law, it must receive three readings. Anyone who [...]
Quote of the day
The Senate has been very severely criticized for its action … If we enact legislation speedily, we are called rubber stamps. If we exercise the constitutional authority which the Senate possesses under the British North America Act, we are told that we are doing something that we have no right to do. I do not [...]
Quote of the day
Those are the arguments that were put forward against the 1832 Act, the 1867 Act, the 1911 Act-every single reform that we have ever had-and they are the arguments that are being put forward now. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. – Lord Ashdown during debate in the House of Lords on [...]
Quote of the day
I may just be a little council house lad from a very poor background but that background gives me a backbone, it gives me a thick skin and I am not going to be kowtowed by the whips or even the prime minister of my country on an issue that I feel passionately about, that [...]
Filibusters in the House of Commons, part 2
In my first post on this topic, I explained that filibusters are very rare in the Canadian House of Commons because various rules have been introduced over time to both strictly regulate proceedings in the Chamber, and to allow Government to introduce measures to curtail debate when they deem it necessary to do so. As [...]
Quote of the day
Something sad has happened when the media consensus can unite with ill-placed self-righteousness, not only temporarily to overwhelm logic but moreover to defeat the government of the day, which doesn’t even try to defend the entirely correct position it held hitherto. – Alex Deane, “U-turn if you want to…“ Related Posts:Quote of the dayQuote of [...]
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
