Historically, the questioning model of Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons was collective: the Prime Minister was questioned together with ministers. Question Period takes place every sitting day, and by convention the Prime Minister is expected to attend. In this collective questioning model, MPs addressed questions to the Prime Minister or to ministers. Conventionally, the Prime Minister received questions at the start of Question Period, usually from the Leader of the Opposition and from other opposition party leaders. The remaining questions went to ministers.
During the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party promised to introduce a Prime Minister’s Question Period in order to make the Prime Minister more accountable. Following a long tradition of collective questioning, in April 2017, halfway through the 42ndparliament, the Liberal government introduced a questioning slot for the Prime Minister. Similar to the procedure for PMQs in the UK, the Canadian Prime Minister would be questioned on their own once a week on Wednesday.
What can we learn about prime ministerial questioning from this reform?
Given its introduction halfway through a parliament, this reform offers a unique methodological opportunity to study whether, and in what ways questioning the Prime Minister is different in collective procedures compared to individualised procedures.
Previous studies have explored this question through cross-case comparisons: for example, by comparing how prime ministers are questioned in legislatures that use individualised procedures (UK) versus similar legislatures that use collective procedures (Canada and Australia). A within-case comparison before and after a reform in the same legislature may offer insights into whether questioning the Prime Minister alone is conducive to more or better accountability.
Previous work has also shown that a key variable is whether or not the procedure allows spontaneous questioning (i.e. topics are not known in advance), or whether questions are submitted in advance. For example, in Ireland, questions for Oral Questions to the Taoiseach are submitted in writing in advance, whilst in the UK questions are asked spontaneously on the day at PMQs. The Irish procedure displays far higher levels of questions targeted at the Prime Minister’s responsibilities compared to the UK’s PMQs, where questions to the Prime Minister span a wide range of topics; the Prime Minister is seen as responsible for everything. Given that the Canadian Question Period also involves spontaneous questioning, we would expect that moving to an individualised procedure would lead to a similar pattern: a wide range of questions addressed to the Prime Minister.
Importantly, Question Period is to a large extent party controlled. For every Question Period, political parties hand over a list of questioners to the Speaker, who uses the list as a guide in calling MPs to ask questions. This means that access to questioning is largely determined by internal party strategy.
Research design
This paper asks an exploratory research question: How are prime ministers questioned in collective and individualised procedures? Did the introduction of an individualised procedure in the Canadian House of Commons lead to the Prime Minister being more accountable, as the Liberals intended?
Leveraging the introduction of the reform halfway through the 42nd Parliament, I use a before-and-after evaluation design. The first stage of this study involves a quantitative analysis of questions addressed to the Prime Minister in collective sessions before the reform, and in individualised sessions after the reform. I randomly sampled 30 questioning sessions: 15 on each side of the reform. Questions were coded on several variables based on validated coding protocols and analysed in R. The topic of each question and the political party of each questioner were sourced from the labels given in Hansard. I coded whether the topic falls within the Prime Minister’s direct remit, as that remit is understood within the Canadian political system, whether it is shared with a minister, or whether the topic is in the competence of a minister. I also coded whether the question included a conflictual remark.
This first stage aims to explore patterns in questions to the Prime Minister before and after the reform. The next stage of the project will involve interviews with Canadian MPs active during the 42nd parliament, to gain a deeper understanding of their experience of Question Period and of the reform. This paper presents preliminary results from the first stage.
Results
- Widening access to questioning
The move to an individualised procedure increased access to questioning: MPs from a wider range of roles and political parties are able to ask the Prime Minister a question (Figures 1 and 2). Although the pre-reform collective procedure meant that the Prime Minister appeared in parliament more often during the week, he was only asked around eight questions at the start of each Question Period session. This means he was always questioned by the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the second opposition party, and other frontbench actors who conventionally ask questions at the start of Question Period. More junior frontbenchers and backbenchers did not get to question the head of government. The individualised procedure, by contrast, dedicates a full session to the Prime Minister, with questioners including a wider range of frontbench roles, and backbenchers also getting a chance to question the Prime Minister.
2. Less focus on matters within the Prime Minister’s remit.
As Figure 3 shows, the introduction of an individualised slot for the Prime Minister did not result in more questions targeted at Prime Ministerial responsibilities. In the collective procedure around 70% of questions were targeted at topics that were either the Prime Minister’s own remit, or topics that the Prime Minister shares with a minister. After the introduction of an individualised slot, more than half of questions were on topics not within the Prime Minister’s remit. Within the sample included in this study, the range of topics in questions to the Prime Minister increased from 29 during the pre-reform procedure to 59 topics over the course of the individualised sessions included.
Previous studies have shown that the UK’s PMQs, the most well-known opportunity for individualised prime ministerial questioning, displays a wide range of topics in questions; the Prime Minister is held to account for everything. A similar pattern appears in Canada after the introduction of a weekly individualised procedure: when the Prime Minister appears on their own, the range of topics of questions broadens. Far from offering an opportunity for more targeted questioning, a weekly individualised slot results in more questions addressed to the Prime Minister on a wider range of issues.
An individualised plenary questioning procedure creates an opportunity for regular dialogue with the Prime Minister, and a focus point during the parliamentary week, but not an opportunity for holding the Prime Minister to account in a targeted way. This finding has important procedural implications for designing questioning mechanisms.
3. No difference in how adversarial questions are
The change from a collective to an individualised procedure did not generate different patterns in terms of conflictual questions (defined as questions containing at least one conflictual remark). In fact, although in both types of procedure over 75% of questions include a conflictual remark, the proportion of conflictual questions decreases slightly in the individualised procedure (Figure 4). However, as Figure 2 shows, a wider range of actors get to criticise the Prime Minister in the individualised procedure. Whilst the collective procedure primarily involved a duel between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, in the individualised procedure a wider range of frontbench and backbench actors intervene to ask critical questions. The high levels of conflict suggest that the Canadian Question Period is inherently an adversarial procedure, at least when it comes to questions addressed to the Prime Minister, and that changing whether the Prime Minister is questioned alone or alongside the cabinet does not have any visible effect on that.
Conclusions: what difference did the reform make?
The move to an individualised procedure led to a new model of Prime Ministerial questioning and accountability in the Canadian House of Commons.
Firstly, the reform widened access to questioning the Prime Minister: MPs from more political parties and from a wider range of parliamentary roles (including backbenchers) can now question the Prime Minister. However, Question Period remains very party controlled, and access to questioning is not open on the floor of the House. The Question Period strategy and who gets to be added to the list of questioners are determined internally by parties.
The reform also made the Canadian Question Period more similar to PMQs: the Prime Minister is tested on many aspects across government policy. But evidence from other legislatures suggests that this is not always the case for all individualised questioning procedures. For example, comparative evidence from Ireland and the UK showed that open individualised procedures, where the topics of questions are not known in advance, are more conducive to a wide range of topics in questions. If questions are submitted in writing before the session, they tend to be on topics that are within the Prime Minister’s remit. It is hence the combination of the open, spontaneous nature of Question Period, and its new individualised version, that makes it more similar to PMQs.
Finally, the reform did not affect how conflictual questions to the Prime Minister are, suggesting that the underlying culture of Question Period is adversarial, and the individualised/collective character does not affect levels of adversarialism in questions.
Dr Ruxandra Serban is an LSE Fellow in Qualitative Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.