Hate minority governments? Blame the Bloc

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2024 (577 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We are in a moment in Canadian political history where we are seeing more minority governments than was the case in the past. Justin Trudeau first won a majority government following his landslide victory in the 2015 federal election, but has only been able to form minority governments in the two most recent elections.

Minority government have some benefits. Because governments can’t just whip their members into supporting whatever idea that pops into the prime minister’s head, there is a need to reach across the aisle for support. That means minority governments tend to be more moderate, and they must compromise with opposition parties to pass legislation.

The Liberal government’s current supply and confidence agreement with the NDP is an example of this.

But majority governments also have some advantages. Since governments can simply whip their members to pass legislation, they are afforded the freedom to be both decisive and daring. Almost all the major controversial projects of Canadian history were untaken by majority governments which didn’t have to worry about compromise.

Our electoral system, single-member plurality (SMP), is designed to produce majority governments. This is because the system tends to give the winning party a boost in seats. In the 2021 election, for example, Trudeau won 33 per cent of the vote but received a huge seat bonus, taking 47 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.

SMP has done its job for most of Canadian history. About two-thirds of all Canadian elections have led to single-party majority governments.

While minority government have popped up from time to time, they have become a prominent feature of contemporary Canadian politics. Of the eight Canadian elections held since the turn of the century, five have resulted in minority governments and only three in majority governments.

The 21^st Century appears to be reversing the old pattern of majority and minority governments in Canada.

But why is that? A big answer is the Bloc Quebecois.

The sovereigntist Bloc burst onto the national stage in the 1993 election in part due to the collapse of the defunct Progressive Conservative Party. Shockingly, the separatist party came in second in seats and so formed Her Majesty’s official opposition.

The party’s leader, Lucien Bouchard, played a major role in the 1995 Quebec referendum campaign, which saw federalists win by the narrowest of margins.

After that defeat, the Bloc, while still avowedly separatist, became a small nationalist party that existed almost solely to advocate for Quebec’s interests in the House of Commons. While the charismatic Bouchard was well-known across Canada, I’ll bet you can’t name the current leader of the party (I can but only because it’s my job).

But the Bloc still plays a crucial role as spoiler by making it hard for the major parties to form majority governments. Every seat that a perennial opposition party like the Bloc wins and takes out of play makes it that much more challenging for the major parties to find the 170 seats necessary to form a majority government.

SMP also smiles upon parties like the Bloc: small parties with regionally concentrated vote shares. So the resilience of the Bloc, with its small number of votes from a single province, has made the prospect of majority governments in the 21^st Century that much more unlikely.

Recent history seems to bear this out. In the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections, the Bloc received from 38 to 48 per cent of the vote in Quebec and scored about 50 seats in each election as a result. In each of these elections, the Liberals and then Tories were held to minority governments.

Then, in 2011 and 2015, the Bloc vote shrunk precipitously, and the party’s seat share collapsed. First Stephen Harper and then Trudeau formed majority governments.

But the Bloc would rise from the ashes. In the 2019 election, the party scored a respectable 32 per cent of the vote in Quebec and took 32 seats. The pattern held in the 2021 election. And, in both elections, Trudeau fell to a minority government.

The Bloc has staying power. And the current 388Canada polling projection is that, if an election were held today, the Bloc would increase its seat share to 38.

The reality is that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is so high in the polls right now that he may ultimately trounce the Liberals and NDP so thoroughly that the stubborn Bloc may make no different in whether he forms a majority or minority government.

But the Bloc may continue to be a spoiler in Canadian elections. That means we are less likely to see majority governments in our future. And it means that Canadian politics will continue to be characterized by a small regional party that exists exclusively to advocate for the interests of a single province over the entirety of the rest of the country.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.