The delicate dance of minority governments was on full display during Monday's budget vote, where opposition leaders executed a precise political maneuver to avoid triggering a snap election. The budget passed by the narrowest possible margin of 170-168, demonstrating both political skill and considerable risk in leaving no room for error.
The 2005 Precedent: When Canadian Politics Became Opera
Two decades ago, Parliament witnessed an even more dramatic scenario that nearly toppled a government. The year was 2005, and Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government faced a budget vote that would become the first time a Speaker cast a tie-breaking vote on a confidence measure in Canadian history.
Father Raymond J. de Souza, who had a front-row seat to these events, describes the situation as worthy of an Italian libretto, complete with romance, betrayal, accusations of bribery, and the final Parliamentary words of a dying man.
From Majority Complacency to Minority Drama
Canadians had grown accustomed to majority governments through the 1980s and 1990s, with six consecutive majority governments from 1980 to 2000. Paul Martin inherited a majority from Jean Chrétien in 2004, but his budget that year wasn't voted upon because he dissolved the House for an election soon after its presentation.
When Martin returned as prime minister, he held a minority government, making the 2005 budget the first minority government budget since Joe Clark's short-lived minority in 1979. While Clark's government fell due to what de Souza characterizes as "confused haplessness," Martin and opposition leader Stephen Harper orchestrated a political drama unlike anything previously seen in Canadian politics.
The Near-Collapse of a Government
Martin's original 2005 budget initially passed with Harper's support. However, an amendment adding $4 billion in extra spending resulting from Liberal-NDP negotiations created a crisis. The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois opposed the amendment, leaving the Liberals with NDP support still several votes short of passage.
The government faced almost certain defeat until former Conservative MP Belinda Stronach crossed the floor to join the Liberals in May 2005, in one of the most dramatic political defections in Canadian history. This move, combined with other political maneuvers, ultimately led to the historic tie-breaking vote by the Speaker that saved Martin's government.
This 2004 election marked the beginning of a new era of minority governments in Canada, with six of the last eight elections producing minorities. While parties have since become skilled at passing budgets without triggering elections—no government has fallen on a budget vote since—that first attempt in 2005 remains the closest of near-misses in Canadian parliamentary history.
