Tuesday, June 29, 2004 :::
Ministerial appointments are not subject to Parliament at all, but are instead a matter of Crown prerogative (which has come to mean that it's up to the PM, with a rubber stamp by the Governor General). That then leads to the question of how the PM is determined. So writes Chris Jones, who goes on to explain that this is the primary responsibility of the Governor General.In the case of one party winning a majority in the House, the decision is easy: the GG asks the leader of that party whether he feels that he can form a government with the confidence of the House (A: yes), and then appoints him the PM and so on. Now here is the clarification that I really wanted:The key point here is that the Prime Minister continues to be Prime Minister until he resigns, dies, or is removed by the Governor General [which has not happened --- yet]: he isn't required to be sworn in again or anything. Or loses a confidence motion, I presume, unless that simply leads the Governor General to remove him.No confidence doesn't necessarily trigger new elections, either; the Governor-General seems to have some discretion there. If whoever becomes Prime Minister loses a confidence vote shortly (say, within the next three to four months), Clarkson would almost certainly ask the other party leader to try to govern. If that failed, we'd be going back to the polls. On the other hand, if whoever becomes Prime Minister loses a confidence vote after say, six months, it's even money as to whether Clarkson would grant a request for new elections (although if the other party said that they could form a coalition, she might refuse the request for elections). In 1925, a sitting Prime Minister's party finished second, but won the initial confidence vote and governed for 8 months before losing the confidence of the parliament. The governor general then refused to call new elections, giving the leader of the majority party a chance to govern first. In the event, he lost confidence in four days, and elections were called after all.I'm further directed to a work called How Canadians Govern Themselves, which I will check out when I'm not so sodding busy. The intro page mentions that "there is nothing Canadians do in any given day that is not affected by" their government, which has always been my impression of Canada, to be honest.
::: posted by dWj at 11:13 PM
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