Currently the PM doesn’t have a seat in the house. If he visited the house, he’d have to go to the visitor’s gallery.
It’s an interesting situation. The PM is the leader of the federal liberal party, but he’s not a member of parliament. But, does he need to be? Is the PM sitting in the house of commons just a tradition that nobody has challenged yet? Could the PM delegate things inside the house of commons to their deputy-PM and then do things like give speeches, attend diplomatic functions, etc.?
The US has a very different system where the president isn’t part of the legislative branch at all. But, typically presidents don’t twiddle their thumbs waiting for something to do. Being the head of state keeps most presidents busy. It makes me wonder if technically Carney could choose not to run for office, and just spend his time doing head-of-state things rather than legislative things.
By-elections, yeah. When one quits or dies or somehow leaves an office empty. That means that even if there’s no immediate election, there will be one for Papineau to replace Trudeau. Also, if there isn’t an election called right away, most likely another Liberal will quit in a riding where Carney will be elected easily.
But! AFAIK he could also just choose not to be an MP. He won’t, but I think technically he could.
He absolutely could remain PM without being an MP but I believe he then wouldn’t be allowed to actually sit or speak in the House which is obviously not ideal.
Is sitting or speaking in the house really such a big deal? Think about all the republics where there’s a president who isn’t part of the legislative branch. Does it hurt Macron? Sheinbaum? Lula?
I mean, question period is fun to watch, and it’s an important element of Westminster style democracies. But, would it hurt the PM not to be there? If the PM was giving a speech at an international summit on Ukraine at the same time as question period, which one do you think most news stations would cover live?
Especially when the PM’s party has a majority, does the PM really need to be there? Unless there are people from the PM’s party defecting, any legislation the government is pushing is going to pass. The PM him/herself doesn’t need to be there to ensure it passes.
It’s really a quirk of history that the PM is both the head of the legislative branch and the de facto head of state. Before the various reforms of the Westminster system, the monarch was the head of state and the PM was the head of the legislature. The king used to take a much more active role as the head of state. But over time the role became more ceremonial and the PM gained more power. Technically, the king is still the head of the Canadian armed forces. But, it has slowly become a purely ceremonial role.
I’d argue that head of state of a country the size of Canada is a big enough job that it could keep someone busy without their also needing to be the head of the legislative branch. By tradition, PM is also the lead MP, but would it really hurt them not to do that job too? Would it be better or worse for the country if the head of state focused on head of state things rather than split their time between head of state things and head of legislature things?
I don’t think it will change, and I don’t think it necessarily should change. It’s just interesting that the PM being an MP is just a tradition, not a rule.
It’s definitely an interesting conversation to have, and I think you raise some excellent points on whether it’s the most effective use of the PMs time to be in the House. I think one big drawback if they aren’t is that the opposition would be able to speak about the PM without the PM being able to directly respond but a) that doesn’t matter much if the party has a majority, b) it’s possible this wouldn’t be as big of an issue over time if we had multiple PMs not in the House as it’s possible the opposition would start focusing on the leader in the house (such as deputy PM), c) it also wouldn’t be entirely unprecedented as the PM isn’t always in attendance, even if they are allowed to.
In republics where the president is head of the executive branch, the leader of the opposition / minority leader whatever might talk about the president without the president being present or able to defend himself. But, the head of the party in that chamber often defends the president or their policies.
Another thing to consider is that the PM being in the house of commons effectively elevates the leader of the opposition to being a near equal to the PM. If the PM weren’t even there, would anybody pay attention to what the leader of the opposition was saying? This is one reason why it’s probably a better system if the PM is in the house and does have to face the opposition. I think other systems suffer a lot from the lack of a “question period” where the leader has to face questions from some kind of opposition. Even if it often becomes a circus, it’s better than just tame press conferences. But, it might be better for the PM if they could basically elevate themselves to a head of state position and not just some “first among equals” in the house.
There are problems with both systems. The flaws of a system with a president who is the head of the executive branch and doesn’t have to deal with direct opposition are extremely visible right now in the US. But, at least in that system you theoretically have checks and balances between judiciary, legislature and executive. Clearly, the method those checks and balances are implemented in the US is completely broken, but it may be better in other countries like France, I don’t know.
OTOH, the system where the lead lawmaker is also the head of state has problems, especially when the senate isn’t doing its role to slow down the government and push back on bad decisions. There have been times in Canada where the PM can easily pass any law they want because they’re the head executive, head legislator and the senate just falls in line. IMO that situation has the potential to be even worse than what’s happening in the US right now.
For the moment, I definitely want Canada to keep doing the traditional thing and have a PM who’s an MP and does all the traditional PM things. Now isn’t a good time to experiment. But, it would be interesting to have a game of some kind where people could experiment with different systems and see if there’s one that works better. I also think someone should “red team” the existing laws and procedures for Canada’s government and spot weird things that are just done based on tradition so we can consider closing loopholes before someone exploits them, the way Trump is exploiting loopholes and things that aren’t fully locked down in the US.
I think that’s a very interesting thought, I hadn’t considered the impacts on the opposition if the PM wasn’t in the house when I wrote my previous reply.
I definitely agree with you that there’s pros and cons to either systems and it comes down a lot more to how its implemented than anything else. I also agree that this is not the best time to be experimenting with new systems/tweaks to the system and I wish there was a way for us (as a society) to better assess how a system might work without risking so much.