House of Commons.

• Author: Mariage, Chad
• Position: Legislative Reports

With the summer adjournment in sight and important legislation before the House, tensions began to rise and patience began to wear thin in the Chamber. The most important topic of discussion amongst parliamentary observers was certainly the confidence convention. The last months of Spring 2005 led to the examination of this seldomly talked about convention in greater detail. Two clear instances can be identified.

Firstly, arguing that its focus was on the passage of the Budget implementation Bills (C-43 and C-48), the government decided to postpone the designation of Opposition days. The Governement House Leader went as far as to undesignate an Opposition day which had already been granted but on which debate had not yet started. This rarely seen occurence took place after the Official Opposition had put on notice a motion that, if adopted, would have designated the remaining Opposition days, which is, by convention, the responsibility of the government.

The undesignation of this allotted day paved the way for the Official Opposition to use motions to concur in committee reports as a means of testing the confidence of the House in the government. For instance, after the Opposition House Leader moved that the Third Report of the Standing Committee on Finance, dealing with pre-budget consultations, be concurred in, the Leader of the Opposition moved an amendment. He moved that the report be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Finance with the instruction that it amend the report so as to recommend that, in view of its refusal to accept some of the Committee's key recommendations and to implement budgetary changes, the government resign. The Speaker ruled that the amendment was in order and clearly stated that it was not up to the Speaker to judge the substance of any motion; rather the Chair must determine solely whether our procedures have been respected in the presentation of a motion to the House. The vote proceeded and resulted in a count of 153 in favour of the motion and 150 opposed.

The opposition felt they had clearly expressed their non-confidence in the government with this result, but the government felt otherwise. The Prime Minister and the Government House Leader, on numerous occasions, stated that the adoption of a motion of concurrence in a committee report amounts to nothing more than a 'procedural motion' and that it does not qualify as a motion of confidence in the government.

In the following days, motions to adjourn the House were proposed by the opposition and adopted by the House. For the opposition, this was another clear indication that the government had lost the confidence of the House and the moral authority to govern and that it should resign. This led to the second important moment where the confidence convention took centre stage.

As a result of the Prime Minister's address to the nation, in which he committed to allowing the House to express its confidence in the government, an all party agreement made it possible to have the votes necessary to dispose of the second reading stages of Bills C-43 and C-48. The votes took place on May 19, 2005. The government was able to survive this first set of...