page_title: Federal minority governments in Canada
section_title: Joe Clark
hierarchical_section_title: Federal minority governments in Canada / Joe Clark
caption_attribution_description: English: Canadian House of Commons composition in 1979. Each square represents one member. Français&#160;: Composition de la Chambre des communes du Canada en 1979. Chaque carré représente un député.
context_page_description: During the history of Canadian politics, twelve minority governments have been elected at the federal level. There have also been two minority governments resulting from governments being replaced between elections, for a total of fourteen federal minority governments in twelve separate minority parliaments. There have been historical cases where the governing party had fewer than half of the seats but had the support of independents who called themselves members of the party; these cases are not included, as there was never any serious chance of the government falling.
  In a minority situation, governments must rely on the support of other parties to stay in power, providing less stability than a majority government. At the federal level, no minority government has lasted a standard four-year term. Most minority governments have lasted less than two years. The average duration of completed minorities in Canada is 479 days or approximately 1 year, 140 days counting only that part of the 14th Parliament that was a minority, or 1 year, 207 days counting the entire duration of it.
context_section_description: Seats short of a majority 1979: 6. Term of office 273 days.
  To improve his situation slightly, Clark supported the selection of Liberal member James Jerome, House Speaker in the 30th Parliament, to serve as speaker once again, and this was seconded by Opposition Leader Pierre Trudeau. (Starting in 1986, the speaker was elected in a secret ballot vote by the members of the house.)
  While the Liberals had had first the Progressives and later the NDP to support them in minority situations, the Progressive Conservatives had little experience attracting support as a minority government. Seven months after the 1979 election which ended 11 years of Trudeau Liberal government, the Tory government of Joe Clark was defeated in motion of no confidence in the government and its budget moved by Bob Rae of the NDP and supported by the Liberals.
  Clark might have prevented this defeat had his government agreed to support the Quebec based Social Credit Party in its bid to maintain official party status—the party's seat total had fallen to six seats as a result of the 1979 election. However, Clark had hoped to follow the precedent set by Diefenbaker and pledged to "govern as if" he had a majority and then advance to a majority government through a new election without having to make deals with smaller parties. He also wished to win seats in Quebec in his own right and saw the conservative, populist Social Credit Party as an obstacle rather than a potential partner. As a result of Clark's refusal to extend recognition to Social Credit, its MPs abstained in the Non-Confidence vote that brought down the Clark government on December 13, 1979, a defeat caused by the Social Credit abstention and the absence of a handful of Tory MPs due to illness or travel. The dissolution was portrayed as a blunder and the budget Clark fought 1980 election on was unpopular with voters. On February 18, 1980, the PCs were defeated by the Trudeau Liberals who were elected to a majority government.
caption: Tory minority after the 1979 election
exif: {}