Chapter 9Sittings of the House

Special or Unusual Sittings

The House sometimes alters its normal schedule of sittings to accommodate events or ceremonies that are out of the ordinary. These special sittings have included sittings for the sole purpose of attendance at a Royal Assent ceremony, sittings for the purpose of electing a Speaker, secret sittings, and sittings to hear addresses by distinguished visitors.

Sitting for the Sole Purpose of Attending a Royal Assent Ceremony

Royal Assent, when a bill is approved by a representative of the Crown, may be signified in two ways: either by written declaration, or by a traditional ceremony, one that must take place in the Senate Chamber.¹²⁹

The Royal Assent Act dictates that a traditional ceremony must be held at least twice a year and that one of the occasions must be to give Royal Assent to the first appropriation bill in a session.¹³⁰ The ceremony brings together the three constituent parts of Parliament: the Crown, the Senate, and the House of Commons. Traditional Royal Assent ceremonies may also take place when the House stands adjourned. When these occur, the House must be recalled so that it may proceed to the Senate for Royal Assent.

In the late 1980s, the House regularly adopted special orders permitting the Speaker, during periods of adjournment, to recall the House for the sole purpose of attending Royal Assent.¹³¹ The Standing Order authorizing the Speaker to recall the House if it is deemed to be in the public interest has also been invoked to recall the House for Royal Assent.¹³² In 1994 the House adopted Standing Order 28(4), which explicitly authorizes the Speaker to recall the House at the request of the government for the sole purpose of attending Royal Assent.¹³³

A sitting for the sole purpose of attending a Royal Assent ceremony is treated as a recall of the House with proper notice given so that the Speaker, or his or her deputy, may make the necessary preparations. The Speaker notifies the Clerk of the House of Commons and asks that the necessary steps be taken to recall the House. The Clerk carries out this responsibility by informing the offices of the Whips, House Leaders, Chair Occupants and independent Members of the date and time of the special sitting.

The House does not need a quorum for the Speaker to take the Chair when the Usher of the Black Rod appears in the Chamber to request the attendance of Members in the Senate since, in responding to a summons of the Crown, the House is simply being asked to witness an event rather than to make a decision.¹³⁴ At the conclusion of the ceremony, the Speaker returns to the House and, once in the Chair, reports that the Governor General was pleased to give Royal Assent to certain bills in the Sovereign’s name. The Speaker then immediately adjourns the House¹³⁵ without proceeding to any other business.¹³⁶

A sitting for Royal Assent is not considered to be a regular sitting of the House or a full sitting day. The sitting number assigned to the previous complete regular sitting of the House is therefore again assigned to the sitting for Royal Assent, followed by a letter.¹³⁷

Election of a Speaker

The election of the Speaker of the House of Commons is provided for in the Constitution. An election is held when the first session of a Parliament is opened,¹³⁸ when the Speaker resigns or indicates his or her intention to resign during the Parliament, or if a vacancy occurs for any other reason.¹³⁹ This constitutional obligation serves as a basis for the Standing Orders governing when and under what circumstances the election is to be held.¹⁴⁰

The House of Commons is not properly constituted until the Speaker is elected. Therefore, until the Speaker has been elected and takes the chair, no other business may be addressed, and no motion for adjournment nor any other motion may be entertained. The process for the election of the Speaker continues until one candidate has received a majority of the votes cast.¹⁴¹ If necessary, the House may sit beyond the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.¹⁴² When the Speaker has been elected and has taken the Chair, the Sergeant-at-Arms takes the Mace, the symbol of the authority of the House of Commons, from under the Table and places it on the Table, signifying that the House is duly constituted. After a period of acknowledgements and congratulations, the new Speaker usually informs the Members of the message from the Governor General announcing the time and date for the Speech from the Throne and then adjourns the House until the next sitting day.

Secret Sittings

Although it is not explicitly stated in the Standing Orders, the House has the privilege, the historical right, and the authority to conduct its proceedings in private. This has been referred to as a “secret sitting”. The House may conduct an entire sitting or a portion of a sitting where “strangers” (anyone who is not a Member or an official of the House of Commons) are either not admitted or asked to withdraw from the galleries of the House.¹⁴³ These meetings are regarded as sittings and are noted as such in the documents of the House. To conduct a secret sitting, the House has either adopted a special order to initiate the proceeding,¹⁴⁴ or has simply not opened the doors of the House to the public following the prayer at the beginning of a sitting.¹⁴⁵

The House has met in secret on five occasions, four of them during wartime.¹⁴⁶ In the years shortly after Confederation, the House would, upon the commencement of a sitting but prior to the doors being opened to the public, conduct a portion of its sittings out of public view in order to discuss internal or “domestic” matters.¹⁴⁷

Addresses by Distinguished Visitors

From time to time, the House of Commons Chamber is the site for a joint address to Parliament by a distinguished visitor (usually a head of state or head of government). Since the early 1940s, numerous distinguished visitors have addressed Members of the Senate and the House of Commons from the floor of the Chamber (see Figure 9.1, “Joint Addresses to Parliament Since 1940”).

December 30, 1941	Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
June 16, 1943	Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Spouse of the Leader of the Republic of China
June 1, 1944	John C. Curtin, Prime Minister, Australia
June 30, 1944	Peter Fraser, Prime Minister, New Zealand
November 19, 1945	Clement R. Attlee, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
June 11, 1947	Harry S. Truman, President, United States
October 24, 1949	Pandit Jewaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister, India
May 31, 1950	Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister, Pakistan
April 5, 1951	Vincent Auriol, President, French Republic
November 14, 1953	Dwight D. Eisenhower, President, United States
February 6, 1956	Sir Anthony Eden, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
March 5, 1956	Giovanni Gronchi, President, Republic of Italy
June 5, 1956	Achmed Sukarno, President, Republic of Indonesia
March 4, 1957	Guy Mollet, Prime Minister, French Republic
June 2, 1958	Theodor Heuss, President, Federal Republic of Germany
June 13, 1958	Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
July 9, 1958	Dwight D. Eisenhower, President, United States
July 21, 1958	Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister, Ghana
May 17, 1961	John F. Kennedy, President, United States
May 26, 1964	U Thant, Secretary-General, United Nations
April 14, 1972	Richard M. Nixon, President, United States
March 30, 1973	Luis Echeverria, President, Mexico
June 19, 1973	Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister, India
May 5, 1980	Masayoshi Ohira, Prime Minister, Japan
May 26, 1980	José Lopez Portillo, President, Mexico
March 11, 1981	Ronald W. Reagan, President, United States
September 26, 1983	Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
January 17, 1984	Zhao Ziyang, Premier, State Council, People’s Republic of China
May 8, 1984	Miguel de la Madrid, President, Mexico
March 7, 1985	Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary-General, United Nations
January 13, 1986	Yasuhiro Nakasone, Prime Minister, Japan
April 6, 1987	Ronald W. Reagan, President, United States
May 25, 1987	François Mitterand, President, French Republic
May 10, 1988	Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
June 16, 1988	Helmut Kohl, Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany
June 22, 1988	Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
February 27, 1989	Chaim Herzog, President, State of Israel
October 11, 1989	His Majesty King Hussein Bin Talal, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
June 18, 1990	Nelson Mandela, Deputy President, African National Congress
April 8, 1991	Carlos Salinas de Gortari, President, Mexico
June 19, 1992	Boris Yeltsin, President, Federation of Russia
February 23, 1995	William J. Clinton, President, United States
June 11, 1996	Ernesto Zedillo, President, Mexico
September 24, 1998	Nelson Mandela, President, Republic of South Africa
April 29, 1999	Vaclav Havel, President, Czech Republic
February 22, 2001	Tony Blair, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
March 9, 2004	Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations
October 25, 2004	Vicente Fox Quesada, President, Mexico
May 18, 2006	John Howard, Prime Minister, Australia
September 22, 2006	Hamid Karzaï, President, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
May 26, 2008	Victor Yushchenko, President, Ukraine
May 27, 2010	Felipe Calderón, President, Mexico
September 22, 2011	David Cameron, Prime Minister, United Kingdom
February 27, 2014	His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th Hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims
September 17, 2014	Petro Poroshenko, President, Ukraine
November 3, 2014	François Hollande, President, French Republic
June 29, 2016	Barack H. Obama, President, United States
April 12, 2017	Malala Yousafzai, Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

Since the 1970s, the normal practice has been for the House to adopt, without debate, a motion for a joint address to take place at some subsequent moment.¹⁴⁸ In addition to the order to append the address and related speeches to the Debates,¹⁴⁹ the motion has at times also included the date and time of the adjournment of the House, as well as other stipulations related to the Order of business on the day of the address. Since 1980, the motion has also authorized the media to broadcast the address and related speeches.¹⁵⁰

When a joint address takes place, Senators and Members of the House of Commons assemble in the House of Commons Chamber. This does not constitute a sitting and the Mace is not on the Table, but an established protocol is nonetheless followed.

The seating arrangements in the House are different from those of regular sittings. The Speaker of the House takes the Chair, with the Speaker of the Senate seated in a chair to the Speaker’s right. The Table is cleared of the usual paraphernalia and a lectern is placed at its head. The Prime Minister and the distinguished visitor are seated along the side of the Table to the Speaker’s right; the Clerk of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Commons are seated along the other side of the Table. The rest of the official party, the Justices of the Supreme Court, and the Senators are seated on the floor of the House in front of the Table.

On arrival at the Centre Block, the distinguished visitor is met in Confederation Hall by the Prime Minister and the Speakers of both Houses, the leaders of the parties in both Houses, the Clerk of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Commons, the Usher of the Black Rod, and the Sergeant-at-Arms. The Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons invite the guest to sign the visitors books for the respective Houses. Then the Prime Minister, the visitor, the two Speakers, and the two Clerks are escorted to the office of the Speaker of the House of Commons by the Usher of the Black Rod and the Sergeant-at-Arms, while the party leaders are escorted to the House of Commons by pages from the Senate and the House of Commons.

At the appointed hour, the official party enters the House of Commons Chamber. After providing a brief introduction, the Speaker of the House of Commons invites the Prime Minister to address the assembly. The Prime Minister takes the floor and presents the distinguished visitor. Following the visitor’s address, he or she is thanked by the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons, who concludes the assembly. The official party then exits the Chamber and returns to the office of the Speaker of the House of Commons in this order: the Usher of the Black Rod first, followed by the distinguished visitor and the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Senate, the Clerk of the Senate, the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Clerk of the House of Commons.

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