Prime Minister Trudeau’s resignation, prorogation, and leadership race initiation last week have set off a firestorm of speculation around what the government could do to extend its stay in power.
The Hub’s managing editor Harrison Lowman reached out to Philippe Lagassé, parliamentary and Westminster expert, Carleton University associate professor, and the Barton Chair at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, to discuss the tools Prime Minister Trudeau, the Liberal Party, and the opposition parties have at their disposal in these chaotic political times.
HARRISON LOWMAN: You’ve been saying up until now that we’ve been in a sort of “Dead Parrot” Parliament, which means two things. One, you’re a Monty Python fan, and two….what?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: We’re talking about a parliament that exists in theory. We’ve been told that it’s still viable, that it’s still going, when in reality this is a parliament that has come to its end, and we’re just pretending that it’s still alive.
The opposition parties seem to be telling us that it’s over. But never say never. We don’t know. Maybe it will be revived after the new prime minister provides a Throne Speech. But when you look at everything that’s been happening over the past six months—with procedural deadlock and the opposition parties gradually unifying to vote non-confidence in the government, which they’ve all now promised to do when parliament is re-summoned at the end of March—I would argue that this Parliament is basically defunct.
HARRISON LOWMAN: What dictates that Canada has to have a federal election every five years?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Within the Constitution, we have a time limit due to the Constitution Act 1982 as well as 1867. There may be some scenarios in times of war where there could be an extension.
We also have, in the Canada Elections Act, a fixed date for these parliaments which is a year earlier than what’s in the Constitution. There’s some debate as to whether or not that is binding on the Governor General, in terms of, “Does that preclude a prime minister from advising that the parliament should not be dissolved or keeping it going?” I would argue that when Parliament says that it’s going to be dissolved or have an election within a certain date, that’s a fairly firm date, and we’d be in a bit of a constitutional crisis if we went past that. But as it stands now, based on the previous election, this Parliament has to come to an end in October 2025.
HARRISON LOWMAN: The last government to serve a full five years, was it Mulroney 1988 to 1993?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: That sounds about right. We’ve gone earlier in most occasions because much like prorogation, which I’m sure we’ll discuss, governments have tended to time elections when it’s most favourable to them. We tried to get around that with fixed state election legislation, but you can’t bind the Governor General’s power to dissolve parliament on the request of the prime minister or premier. So it sets a maximum, but it doesn’t set a minimum.
HARRISON LOWMAN: You say precluding special circumstances like war. Any other examples you’d include that would be considered sort of extremely unique, and mean potentially going past five years?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: We’re talking about major crises that would prevent the holding of elections. We’ve had elections in wartime and during pandemic so I’d be hard-pressed to find a scenario in which voting simply wouldn’t be possible.
But you could think of a major natural disaster that simply doesn’t allow you to hold the election because a considerable number of voters are either unable to vote or we’re unable to manage the vote. That would be one example where we might extend or have to rethink the writ period or things like that. But one of the benefits of Canadian geography is we haven’t been in a situation where an actual hostile attack is happening on Canadian soil, which would prevent it. But we can’t preclude a natural disaster or things of that nature.
HARRISON LOWMAN: Okay so the five years is pretty set in stone. But let’s talk about that four year fixed election date. There are theories being thrown around. Could a federal government hypothetically repeal the fixed election date legislation, replace it with nothing, or blow right past that fixed election date, which would then make the election, I think, have to be by September 2026? If the five years is movable barring war, plague, locusts, etc., how immovable or not is this fixed election date legislation?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Well, the legislation itself, to your point, could be repealed. Just to give an example of what this looks like, in 2019 the U.K. was stuck in a situation where the House of Commons clearly didn’t have confidence in the government, but because of their fixed date election legislation, you effectively had a situation where the government couldn’t trigger an election. So, they were a bit of an impasse. So what did they do? They simply repealed that legislation to allow for an election.
Parliament is sovereign over its own affairs, so it could do so. But your question is an interesting one because the Trudeau government is coming to an end on March 9th, so the Trudeau government will not be the one that would repeal this.

Let’s say, a new Liberal leader and prime minister comes in, do they have the ability to repeal that legislation? They technically could, but that assumes that they survive the confidence votes that they’re going to face when they come back in March. It also assumes that the Senate and the opposition parties would play along. And I would say that’s probably not going to happen. As well, when you look at how long it takes Canada to legislate when there isn’t general agreement across the board, it’s a pretty arduous process. So, I suspect that that law is going to still be in place.
HARRISON LOWMAN: You’d really have to have your ducks all in a row. You’d have to have some folks across the aisle supporting you. And you’d also have to be ready for, I guess, the ensuing public response to doing that in this really tense period we’re in now.
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Just the legitimacy of trying to repeal that legislation without having some clear rationale, aside from pure partisan interest, I just don’t see it.
HARRISON LOWMAN: But it is possible technically?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Yes, you could technically repeal that law. Or, some would argue that the law isn’t binding and therefore you could simply keep the Parliament going and ignore the law. I think that would be a major constitutional crisis. But technically, yes.
HARRISON LOWMAN: And that would make the actual election sometime before, I think it’s September 20, 2026, right?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Right.
HARRISON LOWMAN: The prime minister has to advise the Governor General to meet with him or her to dissolve Parliament and initiate an election. So, could a Prime Minister theoretically just not advise a meeting and keep on governing?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Some argue that the Governor General’s power to dissolve Parliament isn’t affected by the Canada Elections Act. Those who hold this position argue that the CEA can’t force a dissolution as a result. I don’t think that’s correct though.
HARRISON LOWMAN: You’ve proposed a law to regulate the length of prorogations. Can you tell me about that?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Ever since the prime minister looked like he was about to resign and looked like he was going to prorogue for a leadership race, a number of commentators, including at The Hub, argued that the Governor General should refuse to grant that prorogation.
My point is that would involve a degree of vice regal discretion that we have not seen in over a century. And it misunderstands the nature of the conventions around this. The far better way to deal with lengthy prorogations is for Parliament to step in, as opposed to expecting the Governor General to do something about it.
So if you want to limit how governments use prorogation, you should either tighten the supply cycle such that Parliament has to be summoned more regularly. One of the reasons that the prorogation is only going until the end of March is because the government needs to vote on interim estimates, and then the main estimates. So that’s a cap on the length of prorogations, which is when the government needs money.
So you could technically add additional supply dates. Or you could have Parliament try, in legislation, to say “We’re not preventing the Governor General from proroguing on the advice of the prime minister, but we’re limiting the length of the prorogations.” That would probably involve a court challenge, but I think it’s worth an effort to see if that would be possible.
HARRISON LOWMAN: Could the prime minister return to Rideau Hall and say, “We need to extend this prorogation for a couple of months”?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Not really because they need to pass the estimates. So that’s a circumstance in which the Governor General can say, “I can’t grant that, or I can’t accept that request.”
And I don’t think it would be a full refusal. There’d be a back and forth between Rideau Hall and the Privy Council Office so that it never came to a full confrontation between the prime minister and the Governor General. But Rideau Hall would say, “Constitutionally, you guys need supply. How are you going to run this government without money?”
It’s only in a dissolution that the Governor General can grant what are called “special warrants,” where the Crown basically provides the executive money during an election period. You can’t do that during a prorogation.
HARRISON LOWMAN: Elections Canada dictates that campaigns must be at least 37 days and no more than 51 days. Can that be changed? Can the election be made to be longer?
We hear things in our neck of the woods, that perhaps a new Liberal leader might want to have more time to introduce himself or herself to the public. Wanting a longer election there to do so and go across the country. What is possible and not possible?

Voters head to cast their ballot in Canada’s federal election at the Fairbanks Interpretation Centre in Dartmouth, N.S., Monday, Oct. 21, 2019. Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press.
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Again it’s a question of legislation. So it would be very difficult to change that legislation in the time that they have available.
HARRISON LOWMAN: Looking at that leadership race that’s playing out now, as people throw their hats in the ring. Could we have a prime minister elected by the Liberal Party who doesn’t have a seat in Parliament?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Yes.
HARRISON LOWMAN: How does that work?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: The office of prime minister and all ministers of the Crown are formally separate and distinct from the seats that parliamentarians usually have, right? You hold the office of prime minister, legally speaking, separately from the office you hold as a parliamentarian.
It is only by constitutional convention—so the political rules of the Constitution—that we demand that somebody who holds the office of prime minister or any other ministerial office also sit in Parliament. The reason we keep it as a convention, as opposed to a law, is precisely to allow for some degree of flexibility.
As we saw when Stephen Harper formed government in 2006, he didn’t have a good Quebec representative for cabinet. So what did he do? He appointed Michael Fortier and appointed him to the Senate to serve in cabinet.
John Turner became leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister without holding a seat in Parliament, he went and got one later before the election.
So we could be in a scenario where somebody like a Mark Carney wins the Liberal leadership, becomes prime minister, but does not have a seat in Parliament.
Convention would demand that he be seeking to obtain one. That can happen in many ways, usually by-elections or other things like that. But there’s nothing that precludes, in law, a prime minister being appointed who doesn’t have a seat in Parliament. There’s no precedent of a PM appointing himself to the Senate, but we did have PMs who sat in the Senate.
HARRISON LOWMAN: How flexible is “seeking to obtain a seat”? What does that consist of?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: In Turner’s case, it was, it was quite a few months, right?
We’ve seen scenarios in the past where the party carries the most seats in the election, but the leader loses their seat or doesn’t win their seat. That happened to Mackenzie King. And what you do then is, typically, a governing party member will vacate their seat and you’ll run into a by-election to allow the prime minister to run and obtain a seat. But it’s one of these rules that has to be flexible precisely because the way that you get around it can vary quite a bit.
But there is still a pretty strong expectation that eventually, that prime minister will sit in Parliament.
In the past, we might have said, “Okay, well, can the prime minister just appoint themselves to the Senate? Yes, technically. Would that be a good way to go? No. Our expectation, increasingly, is that they need to be in the House of Commons.
In a really strange scenario, you could have a prime minister appoint themselves to the Senate in anticipation of a by-election for the Commons.
HARRISON LOWMAN: But if they don’t pursue a seat, what are the consequences?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: Well, as with most constitutional conventions, there’s no consequence. This isn’t something that the courts can enforce. It’s something that we expect the political process to solve.
So much like Trudeau’s resignation, it’s political pressure. It’s the untenability of having a prime minister who’s not answering in question period, that kind of thing. So that’s really where the where it comes from. The enforcement mechanisms really depend on honourable behaviour. As with most conventions. We have all these rules, legal and political, but we depend on a willingness and honourable behavior to make sure that people actually follow the rules.
HARRISON LOWMAN: My final question: what are the most outlandish theories you’re hearing in terms of proposals that might play out? I’m online and there are some people saying, “Prime Minister Trudeau is going to find a way to stay on.”
What are the most ridiculous scenarios that you’ve seen thrown about over the last week?
PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ: I think most of the boneheaded stuff and meatheadedness that we’re seeing is either around Poilievre’s security clearance.
Also somehow that the foreign interference report is going to come out and that’s going to justify the prime minister staying in office in some kind of wild emergency, or that this is going to coalesce to make sure that, you know, the Conservatives are kept from power.
We’ve been dealing with that conspiracy theory for quite some time now, and it’s now starting to seep into the mainstream, which is really regrettable.
The other one would be that the prime minister is going to simply dissolve so that he can stay on as prime minister and run the election based on something that happens between now and March 9th. I wouldn’t rule that one out, actually, funnily enough. Highly unlikely, but you never know.
I think what people are dreaming about—the real “Tru-Anons,” the hardcore ones—are thinking back to his father and the fact that the Joe Clark government fell and Trudeau had to come back in as Liberal leader. And then he won his majority in 1980.
So there’s some hope on the hardcore Tru-Anons types that something will be in the foreign interference report that will justify holding an election immediately to prevent Poilievre from winning, and he therefore stays on and wins around a resounding majority.
I mean, there’s all these wild speculations of what they could do. I think it’s important to realize that in Canada, we usually end up landing in a pretty boring place. Often that boring place is stupid and regrettable, as we’ve seen now, with everything that’s been happening—it didn’t need to be this way—but it’s not so much outlandish as it is really regretful and tragic.
This interview has been edited and condensed.