An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (by-election)

This bill was last introduced in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in September 2019.

Sponsor

Nathan Cullen  NDP

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of Nov. 28, 2018
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment amends the Parliament of Canada Act to provide that the writ for the by-election of a member of the House of Commons must be issued within 45 days after the receipt by the Chief Electoral Officer of the warrant for the issue of a writ.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Parliament of Canada ActRoutine Proceedings

November 28th, 2018 / 3:40 p.m.
See context

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-422, An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (by-election).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend and colleague, the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, for his support for the bill. Just getting through his riding name sometimes is enough to celebrate.

It is a very simple yet important piece of legislation that I am introducing this afternoon. It would simply require that in the event a member of Parliament, for whatever reason, is no longer able to occupy their seat and continue their work on behalf of Canadians, the Prime Minister would no longer have open-ended discretion as to when he or she might call a by-election. This would ensure that voters in that riding would be assured, if the bill were to become law, that they would have a representative in a reasonable amount of time. We are suggesting that within 45 days after the vacancy of a seat, the Prime Minister would be required to call a by-election.

We did not think this was really much of a concern, because in years past members of Parliament have vacated their seats and by-elections have been called. Unfortunately, however, with this Prime Minister, over the last number of months he has been playing politics with the calling of by-elections. If you will recall, Mr. Speaker, this helped unify all of opposition parties to call on the Prime Minister to simply get on with it, to allow the people in various ridings to have the representation they are entitled to under our Constitution, and not to play games with the calling of by-elections. The bill would make those games no longer possible.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)