Lessons learned – Part 1
Last week, the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee released their two-volume report Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election. It’s a fascinating reading, if, like me, you find this sort of thing fascinating. The report (found in Volume I – Volume II is written evidence) tackles the [...]
The Curious Matter of MP Resignations
As a Canadian, following UK politics is fairly simple since our systems of government and our parliamentary traditions and procedure are so similar. Yet every now and then, I learn something new about how things work at Westminster. Sometimes, it is something that I think might be a good idea to adopt in Canada – [...]
On Filibusters
The Coalition government’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has hit somewhat of an impasse in the House of Lords. Several marathon debate sessions, one lasting over 21 hours, during which various peers refused to “give way” (interrupt their speech to allow another peer to ask a question or comment), while others discussed such gripping [...]
Loose lips – Part 1
Business Secretary Vince Cable finds himself at the centre of a media storm today because of comments he made in a conversation with undercover newspaper reporters posing as constituents. There are two separate issues I want to explore here, and will do so in two separate posts. The first is the issue of parliamentary privilege. [...]
Revisiting the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill
Last month, Dr Malcolm Jack, Clerk of the House of Commons, gave evidence before the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee as part of their consideration of the Government’s Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill. Dr. Jack raised concerns that the bill as written might risk bringing the internal proceedings of the House into the ambit [...]
On report stage debate
I have already discussed the casting vote of the Speaker, albeit not in detail. It is worth revisiting the matter in light of the debate surrounding a pending vote in the Canadian House of Commons expected later this month. Background I will not debate the pros and cons of Bill C-391, nor get into any [...]
The jurisdiction of privilege
(Note: Not the information you’re looking for? I do try to help people as much as I can and regularly monitor key word activity on this blog to see what is bringing people here. If this post doesn’t answer your questions, please consider contacting me with details regarding what information you’re looking for, including context [...]
Whipped votes, free votes and representative democracy
In this post, I explained what representative democracy is: In countries with representative democracy, we elect people to a legislative body to represent us. The representatives form an independent ruling body (for an election period) charged with the responsibility of acting in the people’s interest, but not as their proxy representatives, that is not necessarily [...]
Parliamentary Privilege: Overview
I would like to begin a discussion on the topic of parliamentary privilege. My initial idea is that this will result in a series of posts, with the first, this one, explaining what is meant by parliamentary privilege. The classic definition of parliamentary privilege is found in Erskine May’s Treatise on The Law, Privileges, Proceedings [...]
Reforming Question Period, Pt 1 – Canada
Question period, oral questions, questions orales. No matter the name, Question Period is perhaps the focal point of parliamentary debate for most. This is an unfortunate development, however, since it has become an increasingly raucous, hyper-partisan showdown which accomplishes little other than to confirm in the minds of many that Parliament is a childish, churlish [...]
« go back — keep looking »Admin
Copyright
On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
