Will Justin Trudeau face a record fourth no-confidence vote?

Justin Trudeau. / REUTERS/Patrick Doyle/File Photo

The ruling minority Liberal government is in turmoil. Torn by internal strife and external pressures, its leader and Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has been refusing to bow to pressures on him to leave the doors for the party leadership to someone else or his former Deputy Chrystia Freeland, currently riding a wave of popularity and acceptability within the Liberal caucus.

Unmindful of the developments, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided to go on a holiday to celebrate Christmas with his family before making known his intentions over the continuation of his bandwagon, which has been rocked by dissensions.

He has already managed three no-confidence motions, the same number as was done by his predecessor, Stephen Harper, during one of the previous minority Conservative governments in 2008.

Speculations are galore over options available to Justin Trudeau, who had once before exercised his discretion of recommending the prorogation of the House of Commons in 2020. Will he seek another prorogation? Many political experts suggest that he can ask for prorogation this time because the Liberal party is looking to change its leader and needs time before returning to the House of Commons for resumption of the business left pending for the holiday break.

Another option available to him is to recommend the dissolution of the House of Commons saying that it needs a fresh mandate of the people of Canada.

The third option he may avoid exercising is to ask for an early resumption of the House of Commons rather than its scheduled reassembly on Jan.27. In that case, the minority government without the support of any of the three main Opposition parties, may find it hard to survive its record fourth no-confidence motion.

In recent decades, no other government has faced more than three no-confidence motions in a single session of the House.

In his column, political analyst Dave Snow argued that Canada’s parliamentary system of responsible government operates according to the “confidence convention,” whereby the government must govern with the support of a majority of the members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons. When the government loses the confidence of the House, the prime minister must, by convention, resign or request a new election.

“The House can express its lack of confidence in the government via a response to a throne speech, by voting against a budget, or by supporting a motion of non-confidence. Non-confidence motions make up a very small proportion of all motions, which are proposals introduced by MPs requesting that the House do something, order something done, or express an opinion about some matter.

“Motions from opposition parties are typically tabled on “opposition days,” which are allocated to official parties proportionate to their number of MPs. Most successful opposition motions do not require the government to act—they are merely “a declaration of opinion or purpose.” Successful non-confidence motions, by contrast, typically result in an immediate election.

“Using House of Commons data, I analysed every opposition motion, including non-confidence motions, from the 38th Parliament (Paul Martin’s 2004–2005 minority) until Oct.4, 2024 (when the second no-confidence motion by the Conservatives was defeated).

“Excluding amendments, there have been 380 unique opposition motions, which ranged from zero in the short-lived first session of the 40th Parliament (the 2008 “coalition crisis”) to 81 in the first and only session of the 42nd Parliament (Trudeau’s 2015–2019 majority).

“Non-confidence motions in the House of Commons are rare. There have only been nine since 2004 and only two of those were successful, resulting in the 2006 and 2011 elections. As leaders of the Official Opposition, neither Stéphane Dion (2006–2008), Tom Mulcair (2012–2015), Andrew Scheer (2017–2020), nor Erin O’Toole (2020–2022) introduced one—although Dion had planned to before Harper prorogued Parliament in 2008. Between 2011 and 2024, nearly 13 years had passed without a motion of non-confidence.

“That all changed with three (and counting) non-confidence motions from the Poilievre Conservatives since March 2024. This proliferation of non-confidence motions has historical precedent. Over 64 days between March and May 2008, the NDP introduced three straight motions of non-confidence in the Harper government.

“Stéphane Dion’s Official Opposition Liberals, who did not want an election at the time, opposed one motion and came down with a case of “diplomatic flu” for the other two, with only 10 and 20   of the approximately 100 Liberal MPs showing up to support those motions. In all three cases, the Harper government survived, just as the Trudeau government has thus far.

“Non-confidence motions have only comprised 2 per cent of all opposition motions, but the other 98 per cent tell us a great deal about how Parliament functions. Opposition motions were slightly more successful during the Harper Conservative government (42 per cent) than the Martin and Trudeau Liberal governments (35 per cent), but the major difference is, unsurprisingly, between majority and minority governments. As the graph below shows, only 20 per cent of motions passed during Harper’s majority (2011-2015) and only 15 per cent during Trudeau’s majority (2015-2019).

He further says that three things stand out from the results. First, party discipline within the four major parties is very strong, even on opposition motions. Across the 55 opposition motions during (The Supply and Confidence Agreement (SACA), there were only two occasions when more than a single MP dissented from the party line. This included when three Liberals voted against an NDP motion calling for a ceasefire in the Middle East and when the NDP MPs split on a failed Bloc Québécois motion to abolish the monarchy.  

“Second, the NDP was indeed the party most likely to side with the Liberals. Those two parties voted together on 38 of the 55 SACA-era motions (69 per cent of the time). The Liberals voted with the Bloc 56 per cent of the time and with the Conservatives only 18 per cent of the time. Interestingly, the most common voting “coalition” was the NDP and the Bloc, who voted together 71 per cent of the time.

“Third, the Conservatives were most often on the outside looking in. During the SACA, the Liberal–NDP–Bloc voted en bloc against the Conservatives 44 per cent of the time (24/55), whereas the Conservative–NDP–Bloc only voted against the Liberals 16 per cent of the time (9/55). This was a complete inversion from the previous Parliament (2019-2021) when all other parties voted against the Liberals 44 per cent of the time (14/32) and the Conservatives 16 per cent of the time (5/32),” he argued in his column.

Justin Trudeau is out to buy time and stay in power as long as he can. All will depend upon how the Opposition parties work together to force an early election.

Going by the technicalities and legalities, the Governor-General is unlikely to act on the letter written by the Conservative and Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, for early resumption of the House of Commons to consider a fresh vote of no-confidence following the public pronouncement by Jagmeet Singh of NDP to bring down the Liberal government.