How Long Will This Parliament Last?

Canada has a third minority parliament in a row. The last one was the longest-running in Canadian history. What about this time?

Those clouds are, errr, not an omen. Photo by Shubham Sharan on Unsplash

We’ve officially reached the stage where, the election being over, we start to wonder how long the parliament it returned will last. If you’re a certain type of Conservative, you might be hoping and/or betting it won’t be so long, so that your side can have a shot at forming government. But I suspect most Canadians — the writer of this piece included — and even many Conservatives are hoping for a longer run. I can’t imagine many of us are keen to jump into another election soon, nor can I imagine that being productive for the country. We need to immediately confront major overlapping and intersecting challenges, including Donald Trump and tariffs, affordability, a not-so-hot economy and the threat of recession, climate change (still a thing), and lots more. So, this parliament could go long.

A lot depends on what you mean by “long,” of course. The last parliament was a minority and it had a record-setting run of roughly three and a half years — which took it close to the length of most majority parliaments. In most cases, a House of Commons in which no party has a majority of seats lasts about a year and a half. Canada’s 31st parliament, which ran from October of 1979 to December of that same year, lasted 66 days. Three-and-a-half years is long. Two months is short. For our purposes, let’s call “long” anything that runs more than two years.

I think we’re safe to say the current parliament, Canada’s 45th, will run longer than 66 days but will end up shorter than the 44th. This is Canada’s third minority parliament in a row, and it’s sixth out of the last eight elections. We’re getting the hang of them. Barring events of the sort that brought the Liberals back from the brink of devastation mere months ago, the ocean looks, if not placid, then at least safe enough to sail and we’re all stuck in the damned ship.