Canadian prime ministers in the house of commons: Patterns of intervention

This paper explores the parliamentary activity of six Canadian prime ministers from St Laurent to Mulroney. Employing Hansard, each parliamentary utterance by a prime minister from 1949 to 1993 has been coded into one of four categories: answers to questions, speeches delivered, statements made and other interventions. Voting records have also been coded. Employing this database, the analysis compares and contrasts the prime ministers in terms of their political personalities and explores the overall scope and character of prime‐ministerial activism in the House throughout the past 40 years. Canadian profiles are compared with already existing British data in order to test generalisations concerning the diminishing presence of prime ministers in parliaments in Canada and Britain.     

Fiscal rules in the Canadian provinces: Abject failure or qualified success?

Most Canadian provinces have introduced legislation to require politicians of all ideological stripes to meet annual balanced budget (BB) targets. Critics of this type of legislation argue that it is unnecessary, confining, and subject to manipulation. We examine provincial balanced budget legislation before and after the Great Recession and argue that the response of provinces needs to be evaluated taking into account the multiple objectives of fiscal policy and the behavioural changes that the rules introduce, including creative non‐compliance. Rules should be evaluated on their ability to contribute to good fiscal governance rather than on their stringency.