How Canadians Govern Themselves - Parlement du Canada

How Canadians Govern ThemselvesPhoto: Library of Parliament/Doug MillarCabinet meets around this oval table.The Institutions of Our Federal Government40the Governor General on the sameadvice. All Cabinet Ministers and formerCabinet Ministers are always members,as are the Chief Justice of Canada andformer chief justices and, usually,ex-Speakers of the House of Commons.Various other prominent citizens can bemade members simply as a mark ofhonour. The whole Privy Council assuch has never met. Only the Ministersand a handful of non-Ministers attendthe rare ceremonial occasions when thePrivy Council is called together, such asthe accession of a new King or Queen.The Cabinet, “the Committee of the PrivyCouncil,” is the Council’s operativebody.By custom, almost all the members ofthe Cabinet must be Members of theHouse of Commons, or, if not alreadyMembers, must win seats. SinceConfederation, on occasion, peoplewho were not members of either Househave been appointed to the Cabinet,but they had to get seats in the Houseor the Senate within a reasonable time,or resign from the Cabinet. GeneralMcNaughton was Minister of NationalDefence for nine months without a seatin either House, but after he had twicefailed to get elected to the Commons,he had to resign. Senators can bemembers of the Cabinet; the firstCabinet, of 13 members, had fiveSenators. But since 1911, usually therehas been only one Cabinet Minister inthe Senate, and that one withoutportfolio, the leader of the Governmentin the Senate.* (The Speaker of theSenate does have the rank of CabinetMinister and is a member of the PrivyCouncil.) Of course, no Senator can sitin the House of Commons, and no* Twice between 1979 and 1984, there were three or four Senators in the Cabinet. The Conservatives, in 1979,elected very few MPs from Quebec, and the Liberals, in 1980, elected only two from the four Westernprovinces. So both parties had to eke out the necessary Cabinet representation for the respective provinces byappointing more Senators to the Cabinet.