Parliamentary reform would work
In a recent article, Don Lenihan argues that parliamentary reform won’t “force a government to engage in meaningful debate” and reverse the fact that Parliament is, in his words “broken”. Lenihan writes: MPs like Michael Chong and Nathan Cullen remain hopeful. They think that the right combination of rules and procedures can fix Parliament. Unfortunately, [...]
Green papers, white papers and draft bills
You may have come across references to government “Green Papers” or “White Papers” and wondered what these are. What follows is a brief overview of both. Green Papers, like white papers, originated in Great Britain. The term was coined by London newspapers from the colour of the covers of this type of document. The first [...]
Why a referendum on Lords reform is a bad idea
On 23 April 2012, the Joint Select Committee reviewing the Government’s Draft House of Lords Reform Bill released its report. Real life has not allowed me sufficient time to properly read through the entire report, available here, however I do want to take a few minutes to focus on one recommendation the Committee put forward, [...]
Prorogation Ceremony
Canadians are used to thinking of prorogation of Parliament as something rather secretive, done behind closed doors. Because of this, it might be of interest to some to actually watch a prorogation ceremony as it recently unfolded in the UK House of Lords. Prorogation is the formal ending of a session of Parliament, either by [...]
The Queen’s Speech
The UK House of Commons will prorogue on 1 May 2012, and open a new session of Parliament on 9 May 2012 with a State Opening. A State Opening takes place on the first day of a new parliamentary session or shortly after a general election. The last State Opening took place on Tuesday 25 [...]
Legislating free votes
I have written a number of posts on that touch on the issue of whipped votes and MPs toeing the party line (for example, see here, here, here, here and here). During the current election campaign in the Canadian province of Alberta, the Wildrose Party has promised, if it forms the government, that it will [...]
Keyword post: Do ministers continue to hold office during an election?
During an election campaign, the ministry continues to hold office until a new ministry is sworn in. There are, however, limitations on what a minister can do during both the election campaign and the period of government formation following a general election. This is commonly referred to as the “caretaker convention”. The Government of Canada’s [...]
Collective ministerial responsibility and Coalition Government
There appears to be significant interest in the issue of collective ministerial responsibility during Coalition government. For what follows, I will be largely quoting or paraphrasing Vernon Bogdanor’s The Coalition and the Constitution. Following the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in May 2010, the Coalition issued its Programme for Government which outlined in detail [...]
Consolidating the Canadian Ministry
The Canadian Ministry (cabinet) is one of the largest, if not the largest executive councils of any modern democracy. The current Ministry is comprised of 39 ministers (including the Prime Minister). Compare this to the UK, where the Cabinet consists of 22 paid ministers and one unpaid minister unpaid minister appointed to Cabinet, and six other [...]
Some notable parliamentary traditions
Parliamentary traditions and procedure in Canada and the United Kingdom are very similar, which is not at all surprising since Canada largely adopted the same form of parliamentary government, with slight modifications to better accommodate the realities of a federation. While some of these conventions and traditions might strike many as quaint and anachronistic, they [...]
keep looking »Admin
Copyright
On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
