Measuring the effectiveness of a minority parliament.

• Author: Thomas, Paul E.J.

Canada's plurality electoral system often allows parties earning less than half of the popular vote to receive a majority of Parliamentary seats. Several analysts have suggested that this problem should be corrected by changing the electoral system to increase the proportionality between a party's share of the vote and its share of legislative seats. However, while this type of reform would increase proportionality, it would also greatly increase the frequency of minority governments. This paper uses the minority government that took place in the 38th Parliament as a test case to see how Canada's political system might be affected if the country adopts a new electoral system that produces minority governments more frequently. The paper sets out the procedural context of the 38th Parliament and develops six criteria for evaluating its behaviour. It then explores each criteria using a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the actions of the 36th, 37th, and 38th Parliaments. This evaluation shows that the 38th Parliament was no less efficient than its predecessors, featured greater legislative deliberation, and was better able to hold the executive accountable for its actions. As a result the paper concludes that while minority governments are by no means perfect, the example of 38th Parliament suggests that an electoral system which produced more minority governments could increase the quality of democracy in Canada.

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The procedural changes that took place in the House of Commons over the past twenty-five years make it very difficult to directly compare the 38th Parliament and previous minority parliaments in Canada. These changes, which were introduced in an effort to make the Commons more efficient and democratic, provided the members of the 38th Parliament with many opportunities that were not available to their predecessors.

Perhaps the largest changes that have taken place relate to the independence of the standing committees. (1) Prior to the mid 1980s, standing committees required a reference from the House in order to conduct a study or even to meet. (2) Under the new rules, committees may initiate their own studies on issues within their purview and can make recommendations on government action. The independence of standing committees has also been reinforced by the introduction of a secret-ballot vote for the selection of committee chairs. This innovation, introduced in 2004 following the passage of an opposition motion that demanded the change, ended the previous practice under which committee chairs were selected by the government. (3) However, since there was a majority Parliament at the time of the change, the 38th Parliament was the first in Canadian history during which the opposition parties could elect a committee chair against the wishes of members of the governing party.

A second significant change in House procedure has been the simplification of the rules governing private members business, which has allowed more private members' bills to be debated, voted upon, and passed by the House of Commons. However, the success rate is still quite low.

The procedural context of the 38th Parliament was also strongly influenced by the Action Plan for Democratic Reform introduced by Prime Minister Paul Martin at the start of the 3rd session of the 37th Parliament in early 2004. Since that session lasted for only 55 sitting days, the Action Plan's full impact was not known at the start of the 38th Parliament. Of the reforms introduced in the Action Plan, the four with greatest potential to affect the 38th Parliament were: 1) the implementation of a three-line whip voting system; 2) increasing the number of government bills going to committee stage before second reading; 3) increasing the ability of standing committees to review budget estimates; and 4) having standing committees review the nominees for senior government appointments. (4) A three-line whip voting system refers to the extent to which the government sees a bill as a matter of confidence. Under the system, bills with a one-line whip are considered to be "free votes" for all members, meaning that the government takes no position on the issue and the outcome of the vote will not affect the Parliament's confidence in the government. On two-line votes the cabinet takes a position, but government backbenchers are not obliged to follow it and the outcome again does not affect the government's survival. Lastly, the three-line whip is saved for key parts of the government's legislative agenda that are matters of confidence on which the government can fall. As such, all MPs from the governing party are expected to toe the party line. Proponents of the three-line system argue that it allows for a greater range of compromise and debate on less important bills while still allowing the government to demonstrate that it has the confidence of the House on important issues.

Like the three-line whip, sending bills to committee prior to second reading is seen to raise the level of democracy in the House. Under the standing orders the ability of committees to amend the substance of a bill is severely limited once second reading has taken place. (5) Moreover, committee members have less freedom to compromise on the issue after second reading since parties are forced to take positions on the topic during the debate and vote that second reading involves. Sending bills to a committee earlier in the legislative process is therefore seen to increase Parliament's deliberative role by allowing it to conduct a meaningful debate on a bill before its content is finalized. Notably, the government has been able to send bills to committee before second reading since the amendment of the Standing Orders in 1994. (6) However, the provision was infrequently used, leading to complaints from analysts and opposition members.

In contrast to the new development of the three-line whip, standing committees have been tasked with reviewing the budgetary estimates for their counterpart departments since the 1960s. However, committees often lack the information they need to have an informed debate on the estimates, thereby preventing them from exercising executive accountability. Consequently, Prime Minister Martin's proposal focused on providing committees with the resources they needed to review the estimates in a meaningful way.

Like the ability to send bills to committee stage before second reading, the executive has long had the option of asking Standing committees to review nominees for government positions, but has done so very infrequently. This concentration of the appointment process within the executive has often led to accusations of patronage against the government and has undermined the public's confidence in government institutions. (7) To improve this situation, the Action Plan allowed committees to review nominees' qualifications and report back to Parliament with their findings. However, given fears that the review would become overly politicised, the plan left the final approval of appointments in the hands of the Prime Minister. (8)

Given this procedural context, a number of criteria for evaluating the democratic performance of the 38th Parliament can be determined. The democratic benefits of minority parliaments can be seen in the extent to which the 38th Parliament featured increased: 1) legislative compromise and deliberation; 2) executive accountability to the legislature; and 3) opportunities for private members. On the other hand, criteria relating to the potentially harmful effects of minority parliaments include the extent to which the 38th Parliament featured reduced: 1) legislative efficiency; 2) government stability; and 3) accountability to citizens at election.

Legislative Compromise and Deliberation in the 38th Parliament

There are two main indicators that will be used to determine whether the 38th Parliament featured greater compromise and deliberation around legislation than its predecessors: the number of government bills referred to committee stage before second reading and the total number of bills amended by committees. Proponents of electoral reform argue that minority governments must compromise with opposition parties and accept changes to their legislative proposals. Moreover, in the minority situation, the opposition can defeat the government on any vote. Consequently, one would expect that more bills would be passed with amendments in a minority situation than would be the case in a majority parliament. It would also seem likely that the amendments passed in a minority parliament would have greater substance, than those in a majority since the opposition parties can join together to pass any changes they desire. However, attempts to quantify the substance of an amendment are inherently subjective, with those that seem trivial to the average observer often being of great importance to a particular segment of the population. As a result this article will focus only on whether the number of bills amended increased during the minority situation.

According to the Standing Orders, all bills must be referred to a committee after either first or second reading. The committees then conduct detailed studies of the bills, often calling witnesses to testify on the legislation and then performing a thorough clause-by-clause review of its provisions. As a result, the committee stage is where the bulk of amendments are likely to take place. Table 1 compares the number of bills that were amended at committee stage in the 36th, 37th and the 38th Parliaments. In an effort to control for outside influences and isolate the impact of the change from a majority to a minority parliament, the Table only includes data from the sixteen thematic standing committees that existed in all three Parliaments. (9) For ease of comparison, the data for each session has been...