I feel like this is really reaching. I think it's pretty valid to say that Harper, while he was avoiding a confidence motion, had obtained the right to govern. A lot of people were hoping for the GG to go against that basic fact, including tbh me, but it was always a long shot.
A PM who has literally just failed the first and most important confidence test though? That's a very different matter.
After sleeping on it:
a) I've come around to your way of thinking. The most relevant example here is
1908 Newfoundland, where an effective tie meant no one could command the confidence of the legislature after a speaker was elected, but both parties were given a chance to prove that.
b) I have a surprising amount of residual bitterness over how everything played out in 2008. Why did the Liberal-NDP coalition have to announce itself before the vote, thereby giving time to the Conservatives to delegitimize a perfectly legitimate option? And why did the GG accept Harper's logic, when the Ontario precedent gave her another way? It still infuriates me to this day.
I'm not sure there is a firm convention that an LT is supposed to act on the advice of the Premier (see: Byng) but the LT is supposed to at least ask for the advice of the Premier.
Apparently Clark did request a new election from the LT and was rejected!
Sounds like a certain LG wants to be discussed at the next
Commonwealth Speakers Conference!
Seriously, though, it'll be interesting when the full story eventually comes out.
I thought this actually happened at the federal level years and years ago -- whereby a GG actually gave the minority party a chance instead of calling a new election?
Federally, this has only happened the one time, as maharg notes: in 1926, with the King-Byng affair. Just in case there's anyone here who doesn't know what King-Byng was, in a nutshell:
- the Liberal King had been PM going into the 1925 election
- the Conservatives won a plurality of seats
- King vowed to continue on with the support of the Progressives, which he was allowed to do because the PM remains PM until they resign/no longer have the confidence of the House
- King lost a confidence vote in the House, went to the GG Byng, and asked for a new election
- Byng refused and offered the Conservatives a shot at governing
- the Conservatives lost a confidence vote almost immediately, since one constant of Canadian politics from 1920 until 1940 or so was that the were destined to crash and burn every time Arthur Meighen led them
- in the resulting election, King campaigned against the power of the Crown to overrule the PM's advice, and won a new mandate, which people have generally taken to indicate that the Crown (be it the GG or the LG) is expected to act on the advice of the Governor-in-Council (that is, the First Minister and his/her cabinet) provided they have the demonstrated confidence of the House.
And that's the only time that power has changed hands federally without a new election. We all remember what Harper did, and even with the opposition signaling they could form a workable coalition, the GG turned them down. Beyond that one time, minority parliaments tend to lead to situations where both the governing party and the opposition party think that they'll win the next election.
Provincially, the example from Ontario is that the PCs had been in power for more than 40 years in 1985, and when they only won a minority in that election, the Liberals and NDP signed an accord promising that they would provide stable government for two years. The LG accepted that argument, and ended the PC dynasty.
There aren't too many other provincial examples, which is why we're in such new territory here.
This is why I hate British Westminster systems sometimes. Everything is a hodgepodge of customs and traditions. Is there anything that prevents a speaker from being partisan? Other than it being similar to the "nuclear option" in the US Senate where no one wanted to use a simple majority to confirm SCOTUS appointments?
Correction: this is what makes Westminster systems so amazing!
Anyway, nothing prevents a Speaker from being partisan, but we've avoided it because our system is geared towards the idea that the legislature should be run in a non-partisan way. There are some people who agree with you,
including a former Speaker of the BC legislature, but I feel like Andrew Scheer's time as Speaker -- where he often acted in a pretty blatantly partisan manner -- shows why it's a bad thing.
BC will be an interesting test case, because you're right: it's only custom that stops a Speaker from being partisan, so it could be changed at any time if a party wanted to do so. The challenge would be doing it in a way that doesn't seem like an abuse of Parliament, and I could see a Speaker propping up the government on every vote getting into some pretty dicey waters pretty quickly.
