The Independence of Parliament

The beginning of the 45th Parliament has been a showcase for the ever-declining independence of our elected representatives. Parliament does not belong to the government; it belongs to its members. The Speaker does not belong to the government; he belongs to the members. Caucus does not belong to the government; it belongs to its members. And the members belong to the people, not their parties. The House of Commons is and must be the master of its own destiny and its membership must assert its and their role.

The first sitting week of 2025 saw the election of former Liberal caucus chair Francis Scarpaleggia as Speaker of the House, the rejection of the Reform Act by his former caucus, and the 76-year old King of Canada making his 20th lifetime visit to his kingdom in order to assert our independence by delivering the speech from the throne. All while the leader of the Conservative party, soundly defeated by his own constituents, holds onto a home and an office to which he is no longer entitled.

Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont served as the deputy speaker in the 44th Parliament and had intended to run for Speaker in the 45th. He and fellow Conservative John Nater rose to withdraw their candidacies at the last possible moment on Monday ahead of the speeches from each of those offering themselves for the role, leaving six Liberal MPs to vie for the Chair.

Those Liberal candidates were good ones; but that is not the issue. It is a deeper and long-running philosophical problem in Canadian politics.

No opposition member presented themselves for the role, in spite of the opportunity to do so, for the simple reason that it is not in the political interest of their parties for them to do so. John Nater is a procedure nerd who would have done well in the chair. Chris d’Entremont had already spent the last several years doing the job. It is unlikely that either of them decided not to pursue the prestigious role completely on their own.

For all the opposition parties, having a Speaker from their ranks would impact the very narrow margin between the government’s minority status and its ability to win votes in the House. While individuals may have been interested, their parties have a strong interest in preventing them.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May, being once again alone in the House and long-rumoured to be interested in the Speakership, could not run because doing so would end her party. The NDP being at seven members and losing official party status couldn’t and for similar reasons — they need all hands on deck if they’re to survive.

That the partisan interests of the parties in the House govern the selection of the Speaker is a testament to how thoroughly we have lost sight of the role of Members of Parliament. If it were truly functional, the parties would be almost incidental to the process, not central to it.

Leadership by Caucus

There is a tradition in the House of Commons that the new Speaker is dragged against his will by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition from the bar at the back of the chamber to the Speaker’s chair, and newly elected speakers put on a show of pretending not to want the role only moments after giving a speech asking for it.

The reason for that peculiar tradition is found in the name of the job. The Speaker is the person whose purpose was initially to be the interlocutor between Parliament and the King. Early on, the Speaker, upon being the bearer of unwelcome news, could lose his head for carrying out the task. At least 7 Westminster speakers were executed on orders of the King in this manner.

It was King Charles I who entered British Parliament to personally arrest five Members of Parliament who opposed him on the charges of treason, resulting in their civil war, his own beheading, and an 11 year run as a republic, ending when his son King Charles II was reappointed to the throne in 1660 to restore stability on a new understanding of a division of powers between the Crown and the elected representatives of the people. And it was King Charles III who entered the Senate chamber in Canada this week to open our 45th Parliament.

That it was a King Charles who came to assert Canada’s independence in the face of continued existential threats from the American wannabe-king Trump is thus as ironic as it is symbolic.

The selection of the Speaker should serve as the first act in establishing the independence of the members over the government and the political parties within Parliament. Per Standing Order 4(1), all eligible MPs are candidates for Speaker unless they voluntarily withdraw their names prior to the vote. Those ineligible are Ministers and leaders of recognised political parties. The automatic candidacy of the majority of members should allow the House to choose from among their membership the best person for the role, whether or not the person has offered themselves for it — thus the tradition of dragging someone against their will to the chair. It is the kind of role for which there should be no election campaign.

In the 41st Parliament, Conservative MP Michael Chong introduced a bill known as the Reform Act which gave four specific powers back to MPs within their party caucuses. It gave them the power to remove a party leader, to appoint an interim leader, to select or remove a caucus chair, and to remove members from or add members to their caucus. Parliament passed the bill 260 to 17 in 2014, showing overwhelming support by members from all parties. In order to get that support, a compromise was added requiring that each caucus vote whether or not to give themselves each of the designated powers at their first caucus meeting following an election.

A year later, the Liberal caucus summarily dispensed with the Reform Act at their first opportunity following the 2015 election, and rejected it again in 2019, 2021 — and again this week. Each time, backbenchers ceded more power to the leader of the party.

The Conservatives did adopt the power to remove their own leader under the Reform Act, but are unlikely to exercise it. While Pierre Poilievre lost his seat, his title as Leader of the Official Opposition, and his right to be in the government-funded house in which he continues to squat, he did not lose his job as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and wields considerable power over a caucus in which he himself no longer holds membership.

In 2014, the same year that Parliament passed the Reform Act, a shooting took place on Parliament Hill that resulted in the consolidation and reform of Parliamentary security under the RCMP, giving the government direct power over the security of the House through the federal police force.

Parliamentary Privilege and Security

As a result, the people with the guns in the halls of power belong to the crown, no longer the people. To this day, this has not been adequately resolved. Yet MPs seem completely unconcerned with this existential danger to our democratic foundations and protections.

And why should they be? Members of Parliament require the signature of the leader of the party to run for the party banner, meaning the balance of power is already completely in the leader’s favour, whether or not the leader even has a seat.

The requirement for the leader’s signature is quite literal.

Between the leader’s power over the selection of MPs, the parties’ influence over who is Speaker, the government’s power in managing the security of the House, and MPs who won’t exercise the little bit of power they retain, it is not clear how we can reclaim the independence of Parliament. No wonder so many people want us to switch to the rubber stamp politics of proportional representation.

So powerful is the leader that a Conservative MP who just won re-election in Alberta will be resigning his seat to allow the leader to try again, when the people he already spent 20 years representing warned the whole country that he isn’t up to the job.

The leader should be chosen from among caucus. Caucus should be chosen by the people. Instead, a small set of self-selected party members choose a leader, and the leader chooses a caucus. Who, at the end, is representing who to who?

What will it take to make the House of Commons once again the representatives of the people before all other considerations?

The further down this road we go, the harder that question is to answer.