The 2008–2009 Canadian parliamentary dispute, during the 40th Canadian Parliament, was triggered by the expressed intention of the opposition parties (who together held a majority of seats in the House of Commons) to defeat the Conservative minority government on a motion of non-confidence six weeks after the federal election of October 14, 2008.
The intention to vote non-confidence arose from the government's fiscal update, tabled on November 27. It included several contentious provisions that the opposition parties rejected and that the government later withdrew to resolve the crisis. The Liberal Party and New Democratic Party reached an accord to form a minority coalition government. The Bloc Québécois agreed to provide support on confidence votes, thereby enabling the coalition a working majority in the Commons. On December 4, Governor General Michaëlle Jean (the representative of the Canadian monarch and head of state, Elizabeth II) granted Prime Minister Stephen Harper (the head of government) a prorogation on the condition that parliament reconvene early in the new year; the date was set as January 26, 2009. The first session of the 40th parliament thus ended, delaying a vote of no-confidence.
After prorogation, the Liberals underwent a change in leadership and distanced themselves from the coalition agreement, while the NDP and Bloc remained committed to bringing down the government. The Conservative government's budget, unveiled on January 27, largely met the demands of the Liberals, who agreed to support it with an amendment to the budget motion.
Background
The 39th Canadian Parliament produced a Conservative minority government headed by Stephen Harper that lasted for two and a half years. On September 7, 2008, the Prime Minister was granted a dissolution of parliament followed by a snap election. Harper justified recommending the dissolution by stating that parliament had become dysfunctional and that his government required a new mandate.
During the election campaign, movements for strategic voting to defeat the government came from a variety of sources. The Liberals and the Green Party formed an agreement not to run candidates against their respective leaders and a national Anything But Conservative (ABC) campaign was created by Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams. The election also took place at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw governments in the United States and United Kingdom take drastic measures to stimulate their economies and bail out failing financial institutions. The Conservatives promised to stand firm with Canada's fiscal course, while the other parties began to promise greater stimulus measures.
The October 14 vote saw an increase in the Conservative seat count from 127 to 143—still a plurality—while the Liberals, led by Stéphane Dion, returned as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, with 77 seats, down from 103. Two other parties, the New Democratic Party (NDP), with 37 seats, up from 29 seats, and the Bloc Québécois, with 49 seats, down from 51 seats, together with two independent members of parliament, were elected to the House of Commons. A week after the election, Dion announced his plan to resign as Liberal leader, staying on as leader until a successor was chosen.
The dispute Catalyst and formation of a coalition On November 27, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty provided the House of Commons with a fiscal update, within which were plans to cut government spending, suspend the ability of civil servants to strike until 2011, sell off some Crown assets to raise capital, and eliminate the existing $1.95 per vote subsidy parties garner in an election. Since money bills are matters of confidence, the opposition was forced to consider whether to accept the motion or bring down the government. Flaherty's update was ultimately rejected on the grounds that it lacked any fiscal stimulus during the 2008 financial crisis, for its suspension of federal civil servants' ability to strike, for suspending the right for women to seek recourse from the courts for pay equity issues, and for the change in election financing rules.
Coalition partnersStéphane DionJack Layton Coalition supportersGilles DuceppeElizabeth May After the Conservative government tabled its fiscal update, NDP leader Jack Layton asked his predecessor, Ed Broadbent, to contact former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien to discuss a coalition to oust the Conservatives from power. The plan became public almost immediately. Labelling the absence of an economic stimulus plan as irresponsible and the removal of public funding to parties as an attack against democracy, the opposition threatened to topple the government by voting against the fiscal update. The opposition parties based their strategy on the constitutional authority of the Governor General Michaëlle Jean to appoint a Liberal-NDP coalition able to hold the confidence of the House of Commons to form a government, should the Conservative government fall on a matter of confidence.
It was decided that should a coalition between the Liberals and NDP be called upon to form government its mandate would last until June 30, 2011. The proposed coalition was to have a cabinet of 24 ministers of the Crown, with the leader of the Liberal Party as prime minister, 17 other Liberal ministers (including the minister of finance), and six New Democratic ministers; if the prime minister chose a larger cabinet, the NDP proportion would be maintained. As the outgoing leader of the Liberal Party, Dion would have become prime minister, likely serving until the Liberal leadership convention in May 2009. Further, Liberal party elders Frank McKenna, Paul Martin, John Manley, and former Saskatchewan NDP premier Roy Romanow, were reported to have been asked to form an economic advisory body to the coalition if needed, though both McKenna and Manley declined to take part.
The leader of the Bloc Québécois, which held the balance of power in the 40th parliament, signed a policy accord with the other opposition parties and agreed to support the proposed coalition on confidence votes until at least June 30, 2010. In return, the Bloc would have access to a consultative mechanism for the duration of the agreement, but would not directly participate in the coalition, receiving no cabinet positions and being free to vote as it wished on other matters. Independent MP Bill Casey announced he would join in voting non-confidence against Harper. It has been speculated that Layton and Duceppe had formed an agreement prior to the Conservatives' fiscal update and then persuaded Dion to sign on.Transcript . Macleans. November 30, 2008.Tories toss policy, release secret tapes to dodge defeat. The Canadian Press. November 30, 2008.
In December, Elizabeth May announced the Green Party would support the proposed coalition from outside parliament. Dion indicated that the Green Party would be given input, but not a veto, over coalition policy and left open the possibility, should he become prime minister, of advising the appointment of May to the Senate.
Historical background Since Confederation, the only formal coalition government at the federal level was during the First World War, when the governing Conservatives rebranded as the Unionist Party and accepted Liberals from English Canada into government in response to the Conscription Crisis of 1917. After the world wars, Progressive Conservative and Liberal minority governments relied on ad hoc voting arrangements with the NDP and the Social Credit Party to maintain supply instead of formal coalitions. Pierre Trudeau's private offer of a coalition to the NDP after the 1980 election, an attempt to form consensus in the patriation debate and bring more Western Canadian members into Cabinet, was refused by NDP leader Ed Broadbent.
In 2000, the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives discussed forming a coalition government with the Bloc Québécois if, together, their three parties had won a majority of the seats in the 2000 election. During the minority Martin government of 2004–2006, Conservative leader Stephen Harper sent a letter to Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, suggesting that, if the Liberal minority government fell, the Conservatives would be willing to form a government with the support of the Bloc Québécois and NDP.
There have been examples of coalition governments provincially: In Manitoba, a coalition existed between the provincial Liberal Party and the Progressives following the 1932 election; the two parties subsequently merged, and also led a coalition government with several other parties through the 1940s. British Columbia was governed by a Liberal-Conservative coalition from 1941 to 1952, formed to keep the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from power. In 1985, the Ontario Liberals and the third-place New Democrats reached an agreement to vote non-confidence in the governing Progressive Conservatives and have the lieutenant governor appoint the Liberal leader, David Peterson, as premier, with the NDP pledging to support his government on confidence motions for a period of two years. The NDP had no cabinet posts. The most recent coalition was seen in Saskatchewan in 1999, when the New Democratic Party formed such an arrangement with two Saskatchewan Liberal Party MLAs.
Cabinet response On November 28, Stephen Harper referred to the accord between the Liberals and NDP as undemocratic backroom dealing, stating that the opposition parties were "overturning the results of an election a few weeks earlier in order to form a coalition that nobody voted for"; Transport Minister John Baird announced that two of the Minister of Finance's proposals that had been rejected by the opposition—the elimination of political party subsidies and a ban on strikes by public servants—would be dropped. Further, in response to the opposition's demands for an economic stimulus package, the Conservatives changed their plan to one in which a federal budget would be presented on January 27, 2009, instead of late February or early March. Despite these concessions, the Liberals indicated that they intended to present their motion of non-confidence on December 8.
The government then cancelled opposition day, originally to be held on December 1, to avert the threatened vote of non-confidence, this meant the earliest a coalition non-confidence motion could occur would be the following week, December 8, 2008. On November 30, the Conservatives released a secretly recorded private NDP conference call in which Jack Layton indicated that the groundwork for assuring the Bloc's participation "was done a long time ago". The NDP said in reaction that they would consider pressing criminal charges and alleged that Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) John Duncan received the invitation to participate by mistake, in place of NDP MP Linda Duncan, who had "a similar email address".Duncan accused by NDP . BCLocalNews. December 2, 2008. However, it does not constitute a wiretap crime under the Criminal Code of Canada if someone is invited to participate in a conference call and then releases the recording publicly.