Canada’s NDP doesn’t deserve official party status

Losing seats has consequences. Bending the rules after the fact isn’t one of them

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Are the present rules in Canada’s Parliament grotesquely unfair? The New Democratic Party wants Canadians to think so.

The NDP suffered a crushing blow in April’s federal election, losing more than two-thirds of its seats and official party status to boot.

Ever since, the party’s leaders have been trying to convince Prime Minister Mark Carney to bend the rules and allow the party to regain what is called official party status.

As of today, a party in the House of Commons needs at least 12 seats to qualify as an official party. The NDP’s interim leader, Don Davies, wants to see Carney lower the threshold so the NDP’s seven-member caucus can qualify.

“If he wants this Parliament to work and he wants to do anything progressive, he’s going to have to reach out to New Democrats,” said Davies. “It’s up to the Liberals.”

“Reaching out” means more than just a phone call. For Davies, it means granting the NDP official party status, which comes with millions of dollars of operational funding, paid for by taxpayers, as well as the right to participate as a party in Question Period and sit on parliamentary committees.

Changing the rules simply because the NDP failed to connect with voters last spring would be an insult to Canadian taxpayers.

But Davies’ plea does raise some questions. Why is the number 12? Why not 10, or 20 for that matter? And is the 12-seat threshold high by national standards?

The Westminster system of government, which Canada adheres to, is clear about many things. For example, in order to form a majority government, a party needs to hold at least 50 per cent plus one of the seats in the legislative chamber.

But in Canada, the threshold to qualify for official party status is all over the map. In the House of Commons, it is 12. In the Senate, it is nine. And in provincial legislatures across the country, it ranges from one seat in Prince Edward Island to two in British Columbia to five in New Brunswick and 10 per cent of the total seats in Ontario.

The federal NDP may have a point that the 12-seat threshold at the federal level is an arbitrary number. But does it fall outside the national range? Is it at the upper end of the spectrum, and thus perhaps genuinely unfair?

At the lowest end of the range among Canada’s provinces is British Columbia. In that province, a party needs to hold just two of 93 seats in the legislature, or 2.15 per cent, to gain official party status. At the upper end of the range is New Brunswick. In that province, a party needs to hold five of 49 seats, or 10.2 per cent, to gain official party status.

At the federal level, the NDP holds just two per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.

That means that even if British Columbia’s rules, the most liberal in the country, were applied at the federal level, the NDP would not qualify for official party status.

In other words, not only would today’s federal NDP fail to qualify for official party status in British Columbia, but it would also fail to qualify for official party status in province after province across the country.

Relatively speaking, the current House of Commons rules, which require a party to hold 12 seats, or 3.5 per cent of the total seats in the chamber, to gain official party status, are at the liberal end of the spectrum.

So the NDP’s argument does not stand up to the facts. Across the country, based on the size of its caucus, the NDP would not qualify as an official party. The present rules in the House of Commons are well within the normal bounds of rules in legislatures from coast to coast.

Instead of seeking to change the rules, the NDP should focus on winning the support of more Canadians at the next election. Canadian taxpayers should not be on the hook just because the NDP did not receive more support at the polls.

Jay Goldberg is a fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.