Minority Governments in Canada

Abstract

AbstractMinority governments frequently occur in Canada. Ten of the last twenty-four elections held between 1945 and 2020 have produced hung parliaments. What makes the Canadian case interesting, however, is that all of the governments during this period have been controlled by a single party, even when there was no clear majority winner in the House of Commons. This lack of formal coalition agreement between the parties implies that minority governments have to rely on temporary or ad hoc voting alliances to remain in power. Our analysis confirms that this bargaining approach reduces both the lifespan and the legislative productivity of single-party minority governments. However, we find that these differences are relatively small, and comparable in scope to what we observe in other parliamentary systems as well. Our goal in this chapter is to understand how minority governments form and govern in Canada, but also to explain why Canadian parties are so reluctant to enter formal coalition agreements. We argue that the answer to this puzzle lies in Canada’s federal structure and plurality electoral rule, which tends to promote the regional fragmentation of the party system and increase the number of potential supporters for the government.