It’s a Confidence Motion: Constitutional Expert
May 10, 2005 · By Tom Cerber
Via the Shotgun, Andrew Heard, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University and one of Canada’s experts on constitutional conventions, argues that today’s motion, even though procedural, is a confidence motion:
It should not matter what procedural context a vote of confidence occurs in. The fundamental basis of a confidence vote is that the elected members of the legislature express their collective view of the government. If that view conveys a loss of confidence or states that the government should resign, then the government must either resign or call an election.
Heard’s full statement can be found here.
UPDATE: Andrew Coyne writes an excellent column in today’s National Post, calling the Liberals’ response legal but illegitimate. However, today, upon reading Heard’s analysis, concludes that it’s both illegal and illegitimate. Even Charles Franks of Queens University, the great scholar of the Canadian parliament, who argued the Opposition motion wasn’t a confidence motion, states that it in effect it was:
“If that motion passes, I think they are — to use the vernacular — in deep doodoo,” said parliamentary expert Charles Franks.
Since the motion passed so clearly calls into question the confidence of the House in the Government, if the Government genuinely doubted whether non-confidence had been expressed, they should have followed it up immediately with a clear vote specifically on confidence. Again, as though the first wasn’t explicit enough!
The optics of Liberal strategy here could play very badly for them, appearing arrogant and denying their obvious inability to govern—a party clinging to power for as long as they can. But then again, one should keep in mind the willingness of many Central Canadian voters, when faced with the possibility of a Westerner forming the next government, to deny serious indescretions on the part of the Liberal Party. Too many Ontarians seem to think that any price is worth paying to keep Quebec in confederation and Western reformers out of power, and I suspect, even if that means compromising clear tests of responsible government—the most important principle of modern parliamentary democracy.
[...] ce motion, and the Liberals were more or less right that it was a procedural motion. Both Andrew Heard and to a certain degree C. E. S. Franks [...]