Recent Event Highlights: Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper, Pierre Elliot Trudeau , Lester Pearson/Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Lester Pearson, John Diefenbaker , and 3 more...
Created by TheAgenda on Sep 22, 2009
Last updated: 05/31/10 at 07:02 PM
Tags: Canada Politics Minority Government
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Oct 2008 – present - Stephen Harper (Conservative) 40th Parliament of Canada Election Date: Oct. 14, 2008 Duration of Parliament: 11 months and counting - The Tories under the leadership of Stephen Harper won 143 out of 308 seats to form the second Conservative minority government, increasing their seat count but failing to win a majority. - The Liberals under Stéphane Dion suffered one of their worst defeats ever, and Dion announced his resignation soon after the election. - Shortly after the vote, in the midst of a global economic crisis, the government presented a fiscal update with a number of provisions that the opposition parties saw as unacceptable. - In response, the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québecois signed an accord that would have seen the opposition parties defeat the Tory government on a non-confidence motion and replace it with a Liberal-NDP coalition government led by Dion and supported by the Bloc for a year and a half. - To avoid losing power so soon after an election, Prime Minister Harper convinced Governor General Michaelle Jean to prorogue Parliament until the new year, thereby avoiding a confidence vote. - After the prorogation, Dion agreed to resign as Liberal leader and was replaced by Michael Ignatieff, who eventually decided against pursuing the coalition option. - For several months, the Liberals would not join the NDP and Bloc in bringing down the government in a confidence vote. At the end of the summer, Ignatieff announced that the party would stop supporting the government. - A potential fall election was avoided when the other two opposition parties agreed to keep the Tories in power, but it is uncertain how much longer this minority parliament will last.
Jan 2006 – Oct 2008 - Stephen Harper (Conservative) 39th Parliament of Canada Election Date: January 23, 2006 Duration of Parliament: 2 years, 9 months - In a rematch of the 2004 campaign, the Tories, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, won 124 out of 308 seats, ending 13 straight years of Liberal rule. - Harper capitalized on scandals in - and voter weariness with - the Liberal Party to become the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada. - Although the 39th Parliament was the narrowest minority parliament in Canadian history, it would turn out to be the second-longest serving one, and the longest-serving one headed up by a Conservative government. - Its longevity was partly due to Paul Martin’s resignation as Liberal leader on election night in 2006. It would take almost a year for the Liberals to pick Stéphane Dion as his successor. Even after Dion became leader, the Liberals repeatedly resisted voting down the government and provoking another election. - Eventually, stating that the minority parliament had become “dysfunctional”, Stephen Harper himself decided to dissolve Parliament, violating his party’s own fixed-election date law to do so.
June 2004 - Jan 2006 - Paul Martin (Liberal) 38th Parliament of Canada Election Date: June 28, 2004 Duration: 1 year, 7 months - The Liberals under the leadership of Paul Martin, Canada’s 21st Prime Minister, won 135 out of 308 seats, ending more than a decade of Liberal majority rule. - Martin had served as Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s Finance Minister as the party won three consecutive majority governments in the elections of 1993, 1997 and 2000. However, behind the scenes, and often in front of them, the two men were bitter political rivals, and Martin eventually left Chrétien’s cabinet. - When Chrétien stepped down, Martin easily won the Liberal leadership and became Prime Minister late in 2003. However, his tenure as Prime Minister would soon become dominated by the sponsorship scandal in Quebec, dating from the Chrétien years. - He would also face a Conservative opposition that had only recently united through the amalgamation of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties under leader Stephen Harper. - Polls immediately before and during the 2004 campaign fluctuated from a Liberal majority to a Conservative minority, with Martin’s Liberals ultimately winning, but failing to earn a fourth-straight majority. - The sponsorship scandal continued to plague the Liberals through the subsequent minority parliament, which saw the government briefly propped up by the NDP in exchange for budget concessions. But it ultimately fell in a non-confidence motion that set the stage for an election campaign over the Christmas holidays.
June 1979 – March 1980 - Joe Clark (Progressive Conservative) 31st Parliament of Canada Election Date: May 22, 1979 Duration of Parliament: 9 months - The Tories, under the leadership of Joe Clark, won 136 out of 282 seats, ending 17 straight years of Liberal rule. Clark became Canada’s 16th Prime Minister. - Despite the minority parliament, Clark vowed to govern as if he had a majority, counting on Trudeau to retire and the Liberals to be too consumed with leadership politics to want to go back to the polls too soon. - By November, Pierre Trudeau had indeed announced his retirement from politics. However, a month later, the government was defeated in the House of Commons in a vote of non-confidence over a budget bill that would have increased the excise tax on gasoline by 18 cents per gallon. - The Liberals quickly lured Trudeau back into politics and in the subsequent 1980 election, held in the shadow of a looming Quebec referendum on sovereignty, he led his party back to power with a majority victory.
October 1972 - July 1974 - Pierre Elliot Trudeau (Liberal) 29th Parliament of Canada Election Date: Oct. 30, 1972 Duration of Parliament: 1 year, 8 months - The Liberal Party under the leadership of Pierre Elliot Trudeau won a minority of 109 out of 264 seats, only two seats more than Robert Stanfield’s Progressive Conservative Party. - After four years of a Trudeau majority, “Trudeaumania” had worn off, and his lacklustre 1972 campaign proved to be a disaster for him, as the Liberals lost much of Ontario and all of British Columbia and were reduced to a bare minority. - On election night, it looked as if the Tories had won that minority, but by the next day two seats that looked as if they had gone to the PCs were found to have been won by the Liberals. - The New Democratic Party under David Lewis won 31 seats and held the balance of power. It was thanks to the NDP’s support that the Liberals were able to govern until 1974, instituting a number of NDP-friendly policies. - Having learned his lesson from 1972, Trudeau ran a much better campaign in 1974 alongside his much younger wife Margaret, and won his second majority.
Nov. 1965 - June 1968 - Lester Pearson / Pierre Trudeau (Liberal) 27th Parliament of Canada Election Date: Nov. 8, 1965 Duration of Parliament: 2 years, 7 months - Although Lester Pearson called a snap election in 1965 in the hopes of gaining a majority, his Liberals ended up winning 131 out of 265 seats, almost the exact same results as in the previous election. - The Liberals once again depended heavily on the support of the New Democratic Party in order to govern through their second minority parliament in a row. - The back to back Liberal minorities ushered in several cornerstones of Canada’s modern social welfare system including universal health care, and the Canada Pension Plan. These initiatives were directly related to maintaining the support of the New Democratic Party. - Two years into the government’s mandate, Lester Pearson resigned the Liberal leadership and was replaced by Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who became Canada’s 15th Prime Minister and almost immediately called an election, one that his party won with a majority of seats, ending six straight years of minority parliaments in Canada.
April 1963 - Nov. 1965 - Lester Pearson (Liberal) 26th Parliament of Canada Election Date: April 8, 1963 Duration of Parliament: 2 years, 7 months - Under the leadership of Lester Pearson, the Liberal Party won 128 out of 265 seats. The Liberals, with the support of the New Democratic Party, were able to form a minority government and Pearson became Canada’s 14th Prime Minister. - The 1963 election was triggered by a vote of non-confidence in Diefenbaker’s government, the first time since Arthur Meighen’s stillborn government fell in 1926 that an election was provoked that way. - In Diefenbaker’s chaotic final year in office, members of his caucus attempted to remove him from the leadership of the party. Many Tories were angered over Diefenbaker’s opposition to staging American nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. - Picking through the entrails of this election, some political observers at the time said that although Diefenbaker had shown himself to be unfit to govern, Pearson had not demonstrated the leadership qualities necessary to win a majority. - Diefenbaker remained on as PC leader after the 1963 election and the subsequent Parliament was nasty in tone, but productive in terms of lawmaking.
June 1962 - April 1963 - John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservative) 25th Parliament of Canada Election Date: June 18, 1962 Duration of Parliament: 10 months - In the 1962 election, John Diefenbaker’s Tories won 116 out of 265 seats. The Tories, just four years earlier, had been elected to the largest majority in Canadian history, so this election was a dramatic fall, and a foreshadowing of their loss of power the following year. - Many blame the Tory misfortunes on rising unemployment, a slumping Canadian economy, and Diefenbaker’s decision to cancel the Avro Arrow fighter jet program. - The loss of the strong PC majority was mostly due to a Liberal rebound in Ontario and Quebec. Diefenbaker held on to his core Prairie vote to retain power. - This was the first election for the newly formed NDP, created by a merger of the old CCF with organized labor, under leader Tommy Douglas. - For the first time in Canadian history, the entire country was covered by federal electoral districts, allowing every Canadian the opportunity to vote.
June 1957 - March 1958
John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservative)
23rd Parliament of Canada
Election Date: June 10, 1957
Duration of Parliament: 10 months
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The Tories, under the populist and charismatic leadership of John Diefenbaker, won 113 out of 265 seats. Diefenbaker became Canada’s 13th Prime Minister, defeating incumbent Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. This election marked the end of 22 straight years of consecutive Liberal majority governments.
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The Tories’ minority government lasted less than a year, before Diefenbaker called for a new election. He won the 1958 election over a Liberal Party led by the recent Nobel laureate - and brand-new leader -Lester Pearson.
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The Progressive Conservatives’ 1958 victory saw them win the largest majority up to that point in Canadian history.
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The 1957 election was the first Canadian election to be televised.
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October 1925 – Sept. 1926 Mackenzie King (Liberal) / Arthur Meighen (Conservative) 15th Parliament of Canada Election Date: Oct. 29, 1925 Duration of Parliament: 11 months - The Tories won 114 out of 225 seats. However, the Liberals, under Mackenzie King - with the support of the Progressive Party - were able to win the confidence of the House and form a minority government. - A Liberal scandal emerged shortly after the election, and instead of facing a vote on government corruption in the House of Commons – one he would certainly lose - King asked Lord Byng, Canada’s Governor-General, for dissolution of parliament. Lord Byng refused King’s request and King resigned in June, leaving Canada without a Prime Minister or a government. This sparked a constitutional crisis that is commonly referred to as the King-Byng Affair. - Lord Byng then invited Conservative Arthur Meighen to form the government. However, Meighen was never able to do so. Within a week, his party lost a non-confidence vote in the House of Commons by a single vote. Parliament was dissolved and an election was called, with Meighen as a caretaker incumbent Prime Minister. - The Liberals won the 1926 election by campaigning against Byng more than against the Conservatives. King returned to power with a de facto majority – “de facto” because although the Liberals did not win a majority of seats, they had made a pre-election deal with a group of candidates known as Liberal-Progressives, eight of whom were elected, and subsequently sat with the Liberals in the House of Commons. - King had lost his seat during the 1925 election; a sitting Liberal MP had to resign his seat, so that King could run in a by-election. King easily won the by-election by defeating a young Conservative candidate named John Diefenbaker. Three decades later, Diefenbaker would become Canada’s 13th Prime Minister.
Dec 1921 - Oct 1925 - Mackenzie King (Liberal) 14th Parliament of Canada Election Date: Dec. 6th, 1921 Duration of Parliament: 3 years, 10 months - In the first Canadian election after the end of the First World War, the Liberal Party under Mackenzie King defeated the Conservatives under incumbent Prime Minister Arthur Meighen. The Liberals won 116 out of 235 seats, and King became Canada’s 10th Prime Minister. - The subsequent 14th Parliament of Canada is considered the country’s first minority parliament. It was, in fact, the narrowest of minorities and by winning over a few opposition MPs on each important vote, King was effectively able to govern as if he had a majority. Subsequently, this minority parliament remains the longest-lasting in Canadian history - A new third party, the Progressive Party of Canada won the second most seats in the election. This marked the first time that a party other than the Liberals or the Conservatives won the second most seats; it would not happen again until 1993. However, the Progressive Party was a decentralized party, so much so that its elected MPs declined to sit as the Official Opposition. That job fell to the Conservatives. - This was the first election in which the majority of Canadian women were allowed to vote and permitted to run for parliament. There were four female candidates, and Agnes Macphail (Progressive, Grey South East, Ontario) became the first woman elected to the House of Commons.
There have been 40 federal elections in Canada since confederation in 1867.
Eleven of those elections (including the last three) resulted in minority parliaments.
There have been 22 prime ministers of Canada.
Half of those prime ministers (including the last two) never managed to win a majority.
This timeline, prepared by David Erwin and Alan Echenberg, shows the history of minority parliaments in Canada, starting with the first one in 1921 up until the current one, elected in the fall of 2008.
For more information about any single minority parliament, click on its flag.
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Content and images in this time line are subject to copyright and are either duly licensed by TVO or used under fair dealing. As well, certain content and images are used under Creative Commons license. Duplication or replication elsewhere may constitute copyright infringement.
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To view the source links for individual entries, click on the comment section.
Sources:
The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCESubjects&Params=A1
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Mapleleafweb http://www.mapleleafweb.com/
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StateMasters Encyclopedia http://www.statemaster.com/index.php
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Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
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"Fights of our Lives" by John Duffy http://www.angeleditions.com/fights-of-our-lives/
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Alan Echenberg http://echenblog.wordpress.com/
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/
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