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For further information on recognized parties, see Chapter 1, “Parliamentary Institutions”.
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This rule does not apply when the House is conducting its proceedings as a Committee of the Whole, or during the Adjournment Proceedings, an emergency debate or a take-note debate where Members may sit and speak from any seat in the House (Standing Order 17). For further information, see Chapter 13, “Rules of Order and Decorum”, and Chapter 19, “Committees of the Whole House”.
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For example, during the Thirty-Fifth Parliament and Thirty-Seventh Parliament, the overflow of government Members sat to the immediate left of the Speaker. During the Twenty-Fourth Parliament, the overflow of government Members sat to the left of the Speaker at the far end of the Chamber. During the Thirty-Third Parliament when there were 211 government Members, the overflow of government Members was situated both immediately to the left of the Speaker and in the desks at the far end of the left-hand side of the Chamber, effectively splitting the overflow of government Members to book-end those Members of the opposition parties.
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During the Fortieth Parliament, the New Democratic Party (NDP) caucus was seated on both the government and opposition sides of the House at the far end of the Chamber. During the Twenty-Fifth Parliament, Thirty-Eighth Parliament, and Thirty-Ninth Parliament, NDP Members sat on the government side of the House at the far end of the Chamber. During the Thirty-First Parliament, the five Members of the Social Credit Party sat on the government side of the House at the far end of the Chamber.
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In response to a point of order, Speaker Parent explained the process followed in assigning seats to parties (Debates, September 30, 1998, pp. 8584–5). If a Member is unable to occupy a desk due to a disability or physical restriction (such as a wheelchair), alternate seating arrangements may be made (Standing Order 1.1, permits the Speaker to make such arrangements as may be required). In 2004, a quadriplegic Member (Steven Fletcher (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia)) was elected to the House. A desk was removed and he was seated on the opposition side of the House in the front row near the Speaker. In 2006, 2008 and 2011, he was re-elected and seated in various positions in the front row on the government side of the House, accompanied in the Chamber by an aide who sat beside him. In 2011, a paraplegic Member (Manon Perreault (Montcalm)) was elected. An adapted desk was specially built and assigned to her in the front row to facilitate wheelchair access and enable her to be surrounded by other Members of her party. When she became an independent Member in June 2014, she retained her place for accessibility reasons. Later, she was assigned another seat between Members of the Official Opposition and the third-ranked party, still in the front row for accessibility reasons. In 2015, another paraplegic Member (Kent Hehr (Calgary Centre)) was elected. He was assigned a seat in the front row on the government side, and an adapted desk was built. On several occasions, seats have been assigned to facilitate access for certain Members with temporary restrictions.
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In 1994, at the beginning of the Thirty-Fifth Parliament, the leader of the Reform Party (Preston Manning) chose to sit in the second row of seats; he eventually moved to the front benches.
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From time to time, independent candidates have been elected to the House of Commons. For example, in 1997, John Nunziata (York South—Weston) was given a seat in the back row on the opposition side of the House. In 2004, Chuck Cadman (Surrey North) was seated in the back row of the opposition benches. In 2006 and 2008, André Arthur (Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier) was seated on the government side of the House in the back row. After being elected as an independent Member in 2008, Bill Casey (Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley) was seated in the back row on the opposition side of the Chamber.
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See the Speaker’s ruling (Debates, September 24, 1990, pp. 13216–7). In 1963, a number of Social Credit Party Members from Quebec formed a new party, the Ralliement des créditistes. As a result, Speaker Macnaughton was asked to decide a number of issues, including the recognition of parties and a new seating arrangement for the Chamber. In a statement given September 30, 1963, the Speaker informed the House that he believed the Chair should not be placed in a position to decide matters affecting the character or existence of a party, because those decisions could be mistaken as political decisions. He concluded that the House itself had to resolve the various issues which had arisen as a result of the emergence of a new party. The House subsequently adopted a motion to refer these matters to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections (Journals, September 30, 1963, pp. 385–8). In its Second Report to the House, the Committee recommended that the New Democratic Party (NDP) (which had become the third largest party in the House) be seated next to the Official Opposition; that the Social Credit Party be seated to the left of the NDP; and that the new party occupy the seats to the left of the Social Credit Party (Journals, October 9, 1963, p. 423). The Report was concurred in on October 21, 1963 (Journals, pp. 465–6). At the beginning of the Thirty-Fifth Parliament, “independent Members” included representatives of the NDP (nine Members), the Progressive Conservative Party (two Members), and Members without party affiliation (originally just one Member, but the numbers grew to four over the life of the Parliament). Speaker Parent assigned each independent Member a seat according to his or her precedence in the House. Later, as the result of a point of order regarding the party status of the NDP, the Speaker modified the seating plan to allow the NDP and Progressive Conservative caucuses each to be seated together and identified appropriately. The other independent Members were assigned the remaining seats according to their seniority (Debates, June 16, 1994, pp. 5437–40, in particular p. 5439). In 2001, eight Members of the Canadian Alliance joined together with 12 Members of the Progressive Conservative Party to form the Progressive Conservative/Democratic Representative (PC/DR) Coalition. Among other matters, the Members requested that their designation and slate of House officers be recognized and that they be allowed to sit together (Debates, September 19, 2001, pp. 5296–306). Speaker Milliken ruled that he could find “no procedural objection to the request that members who share the PC/DR designation and the leadership of these officers should be seated together in the configuration that their whip may determine” (Debates, September 24, 2001, pp. 5489–92, in particular p. 5491).
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During the Thirty-Eighth Parliament, the Deputy Speaker, a Conservative Member, was allocated a seat with his party on the left side of the Chamber, while the two other Chair Occupants, both government Members, sat with their party. During the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Parliament, the seating arrangements for the Chair Occupants were modified on numerous occasions. At the beginning of the session, they were seated on the government side of the House between Conservative Members and NDP Members. A few weeks later, their seats were relocated to the last two rows on the government side close to the Speaker’s chair. In the spring of 2008, they were seated on the opposition side of the House close to the Speaker’s chair. During the First Session of the Fortieth Parliament, the Assistant Deputy Chair of the Whole, a New Democratic Party Member, sat with her party. During the First Session of the Forty-Second Parliament, the three Chair Occupants sat with the other Members of their respective parties.
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It appears from seating plans for the Chamber that the Speaker, normally a government Member, used to be assigned a desk on the government side near the chair. No desk has been assigned to a Speaker since the Thirty-First Parliament when, following a change of government, Speaker Jerome was elected to a second term, becoming the first opposition Member to be nominated by the governing party to preside over the House. See Arthur Beauchesne, Beauchesne’s Rules & Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, 6th ed., ed. Alistair Fraser, William Foster Dawson and John A. Holtby (Toronto: Carswell, 1989), p. 37.
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See, for example, Debates, February 18, 1965, p. 11457; August 29, 1966, pp. 7731–2; December 3, 1969, p. 1532; June 27, 1978, pp. 6777–8; May 14, 1986, p. 13268; February 2, 2004, p. 1. In many instances, no record of the change in the party affiliation or status appears in the Journals or the Debates. The Speaker is advised of the change through correspondence.
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For examples of Members changing parties, see Debates, March 13, 1972, p. 745; March 7, 1979, p. 3910. On April 20, 1977, an opposition Member, Jack Horner (Crowfoot), crossed the floor to the governing party and was appointed Minister without Portfolio the following day. On May 17, 2005, Belinda Stronach (Newmarket—Aurora) crossed the floor to the governing party and was appointed Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and Minister responsible for Democratic Renewal. David Emerson, who had been elected as a Liberal in the riding of Vancouver Kingsway on January 23, 2006, was sworn in as Minister of International Trade in the Conservative Cabinet on February 6, 2006. In the latter case, three Members requested the Ethics Commissioner to investigate, pursuant to the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, Appendix I of the Standing Orders, whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper had induced Mr. Emerson to cross the floor in exchange for a Cabinet position. The Ethics Commissioner concluded that neither Mr. Emerson nor Mr. Harper had contravened the Code (Report of the Ethics Commissioner entitled “The Harper-Emerson Inquiry”, dated March 2006, tabled in the House on April 4, 2006 (Journals, p. 15)). On at least three occasions since Confederation, Members have decided to leave the party under which they were elected to form a new group. In February 1943, three Members from Quebec defected from the Liberal Party to form the Bloc populaire canadien in response to the introduction of conscription (Debates, February 10, 1943, pp. 309–13; February 18, 1943, pp. 532–7, 542–5). In 1963, Members of the Quebec wing of the Social Credit Party broke away to form a new group called the Ralliement des créditistes (Journals, September 30, 1963, pp. 385–8). In 1990, in response to the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, eight Members of different political affiliations formed a new party, the Bloc Québécois (Debates, May 18, 1990, pp. 11615–7; May 22, 1990, pp. 11631, 11662–4; June 26, 1990, pp. 13087–8, 13121–3).
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On several occasions, Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore) introduced a bill to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, supra note 9, to provide that the seat of a Member who has crossed the floor be vacated and a by-election called (Debates, March 13, 2000, p. 4398; February 5, 2001, p. 229; October 4, 2002, p. 321; February 2, 2004, p. 10; November 1, 2004, pp. 1012–3; April 6, 2006, p. 60; November 21, 2008, pp. 116–7; June 13, 2011, p. 277). In addition, two other similar bills have been introduced (Debates, September 30, 2009, p. 5378; September 30, 2011, p. 1705).