MPs return Monday to a House of Commons that promises to be even more volatile than it was when they left it in June.
The end of the Liberal-NDP governance agreement makes an early election more likely but not inevitable.
A party can only continue governing as long as it has the “confidence” of the House — the support of a majority of MPs.
If a government loses an important vote, known as a “confidence” vote, it is deemed to have lost the confidence of the House. An election usually follows — although other parties can make a case to the Governor General that they have the confidence of the House and can govern. (The Liberals, NDP and Bloc prepared to make such a case in 2008.)
The confidence convention makes governing in a minority Parliament more difficult. The NDP had pledged to support the Liberals on confidence votes in exchange for movement on their policy priorities, but that support is no longer guaranteed.
Here’s what would have to happen in Ottawa to trigger an early election.
Conventional confidence votes
Certain votes traditionally fall into the confidence category because they deal explicitly with the business of governing.
Votes on throne speeches, which outline a government’s priorities at the beginning of a new session, are always considered confidence votes. The Liberals already have put forward a throne speech during this session; they’ll only need to present a new one before the next election if they end the current session by proroguing Parliament.
Major finance bills — such as a budgets, supplementary estimates or fall economic statements that include new spending — are typically considered confidence votes.
The CBC’s Knowlton Nash briefly recaps the fall of the Joe Clark-led PC government.
Joe Clark’s short-lived Progressive Conservative government lost a budget vote in December of 1979, sending Canadians to polls for the second time in the space of a year.
The next fall economic statement should come before the House rises for its winter break in December. The next budget won’t be tabled until spring.
Confidence motions
The most common confidence votes happen as a result of opposition motions.
Each opposition party is allotted a certain amount of “opposition days” or “supply days,” when their motions take priority over government business.
A government can declare any motion a vote of confidence. The Liberals did so in 2020 when the opposition was pressing for a probe of the government’s pandemic spending, including the WE scandal.
An opposition party can also state explicitly in a motion that they’ve lost confidence in the government and ask other parties to join them in bringing it down. That’s what happened to the Paul Martin Liberals in 2005 and the Stephen Harper Conservatives in 2011.
Speaking in Ottawa on Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said it’s up to Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to ‘put their actions where their words are’ and vote non-confidence in Justin Trudeau at the ‘earliest possible’ time.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has pledged to put forward such a motion at his earliest opportunity. It’s not clear at this point when the Conservatives will have their next opposition day.
But Poilievre would need the support of the NDP and the Bloc Québécois to force an election.
Since backing out of his party’s confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has said he’ll approach the coming parliamentary sitting on a vote-by-vote basis. He also said last week that he would “never listen to Pierre Poilievre” in response to the Conservative leader’s call for a non-confidence vote.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, speaking after Pierre Poilievre urged him to vote non-confidence in the Liberal government, said he’s not going to listen to the Conservative leader’s advice.
The Bloc also doesn’t seem to be in a rush. The party’s House leader Alain Therrien told the Canadian Press last week that he sees the end of the Liberal-NDP deal as an opportunity for his party to gain leverage.
“”Our objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier,” Therrien said. “We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec. Our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure.”
Beyond confidence votes, the only way to trigger an early election is for the prime minister to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament ahead of schedule.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did so in 2021. Harper did the same in 2008.
But given the Liberals are trailing the Conservatives in the polls by wide margins, Trudeau probably isn’t keen on a snap election.
Since the end of his party’s agreement with the NDP, Trudeau has maintained that he is focused on governing rather than politics.
“The reality is, all of us are focused on what to do to make sure that Canadians are being supported, are feeling confident about the future,” the prime minister said during the Liberal caucus retreat last week.