page_title: Speaker of the House of Commons (Canada)
section_title: Election
hierarchical_section_title: Speaker of the House of Commons (Canada) / Election
caption_attribution_description: English: The chamber of the House of Commons of Canada
context_page_description: The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the lower house of the Parliament of Canada and is elected at the beginning of each new parliament by fellow members of Parliament. The speaker's role in presiding over Canada's House of Commons is similar to that of speakers elsewhere in other countries that use the Westminster system.
  The 37th and current speaker of the House of Commons is Anthony Rota, since December 5, 2019. The speaker with the longest tenure is Peter Milliken who served four consecutive terms in 10 years, 124 days.
context_section_description: While the Constitution requires that the speaker be elected by the House of Commons, traditionally this amounted to the rubber-stamp approval of an MP nominated by the prime minister. However, in 1986 this was changed and they are now selected by secret ballot. The speaker remains a sitting MP, but only votes on matters in the case of a tie.
  All MPs except for Cabinet ministers and party leaders are eligible to run for speaker. Any MP who does not wish to put his or her name forward must issue a letter withdrawing from the ballot by the day before the vote. All MPs who do not remove their name from the ballot as of 6pm the day before the election are listed as candidates on the ballot and are allowed a five-minute speech to persuade their colleagues as to why they should be elected.
  The election is presided over by the dean of the House, currently Louis Plamondon, who is the longest continuously serving MP who is not in Cabinet.
  All candidates who receive less than 5% of the vote are removed from the ballot. If no candidate received less than 5% of the vote then the MP with the fewest vote drops off. This continues, with a one-hour break between ballots, until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. In the event of a tie on the final ballot, the ballot is taken again. This happened once, in 1993, when Gilbert Parent won over Jean-Robert Gauthier.
  The winner is escorted to the speaker's chair by the prime minister and leader of the Official Opposition. The newly elected speaker, by tradition, feigns reluctance as he or she is "dragged" to the chair in a practice dating from the days when British speakers risked execution if the news they reported to the king was displeasing.
  On June 2, 2011, Conservative Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle) was elected speaker, defeating the following MPs over the course of six ballots: New Democrat Denise Savoie (Victoria (electoral district)) and Conservatives Dean Allison (Niagara West—Glanbrook), Barry Devolin (Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock), Ed Holder (London West), Lee Richardson (Calgary Centre), Bruce Stanton (Simcoe North), and Merv Tweed (Brandon—Souris). Scheer was the youngest Speaker in Canadian history.
  On December 2, 2015, Geoff Regan was elected speaker by members of the 42nd Parliament over fellow Liberal candidates Denis Paradis, Yasmin Ratansi and Conservative Bruce Stanton. Regan won on the first ballot and is the first speaker from Atlantic Canada in nearly a hundred years since Nova Scotian Edgar Nelson Rhodes in 1922.
  Anthony Rota was elected as 37th speaker on December 5, 2019, by winning a ranked ballot between himself, Joël Godin, Carol Hughes, Geoff Regan (the speaker during the previous Parliament), and Bruce Stanton. Following Rota's win, the Conservatives said that he had them to thank for his new election, after they decided in a Conservative caucus meeting to unseat Regan as a show of strength to the Liberal minority government. They did so by ranking Regan further down on the ranked ballot.
caption: The chamber of the House of Commons; the Speaker's chair is front and centre in the room.
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