Role Of Minority Government In Canada

2019 Words9 Pages
MINORITY GOVERNMENT OF CANADA: HOW IS IT DYSFUNCTIONAL? Why does the Canadian government seem so dysfunctional? This essay focuses on the minority government of Canada, and how it is considered dysfunctional. Minority governments are known to “rely on the support of at least one other party to sustain the confidence of legislature” (Godbout and Hoyland, 2011, 1). With this being said it is important to understand that no party in the government can control a majority of seats in parliament, thus the notion of building a coalition between the parties becomes an ideal notion of democratic rule. Such parties include the conservative, liberal, New Democratic Party (NDP), the Bloc Quebecois and finally the Independent party. In the context of New…show more content…
Partisanship can also be put into context when comparing minority and majority governments and how they function in terms of legislative productivity. Throughout the research of this paper, it is evident that partisanship has played a major role in terms of aggregating interest of opposition parties in a parliament. It has shown how differences of opinions and inter party competition has questioned the legitimacy of the government, as well as the role of New Institutionalism in determining the structural difference of the government in terms of legislative…show more content…
An example of this case would be the NDP which during the 40th parliament supported the conservative government, or the liberals who voted with the conservatives for most of the 39th parliament (Godbout and Hoyland, 2011, 7). This shows that a minority government is not capable of being independent, rather partisanship is seen in the form of dependence, in the sense that parties have to rely on one another even though they have conflicting ideologies, to maintain their seats in parliament. In a seemingly civil war in the parliament amongst its parties, partisanship can be seen when one party is threatened or thrown off by other parties. Godbout and Hoyland (2011, 9), gives the example of November 2008 when the “conservatives were unanimously condemned by the opposition parties, who proposed to form a formal liberal-NDP coalition (with support of the Bloc Quebecois) to replace the government.” Such a vote can create tension between parties as loyalties are questioned and partisanship prevails when these parties separate from each other with their relative gain in

More about Role Of Minority Government In Canada

Open Document