Why Britain has a coalition government and Canada does not

Consider this scenario. A general election gives a centre-right political party the largest number of seats in the House of Commons, albeit less than the majority needed to pass laws. Doing what is customary after an election defeat, the incumbent government, which is a centre-left party, resigns. The leader of the centre-right party forms a coalition with the third-place party. The coalition produces a stable majority and gives the third-place party several seats around the Cabinet table. The coalition agreement is slated to run for five years.

This scenario has recently unfolded in Britain. David Cameron now leads a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. In contrast, coalitions are very rare in Canada.  In the Canadian election of 2006, Stephen Harper ‘s Conservatives got the largest number of seats but less than a majority. Rather than forming a coalition to produce a majority, he opted to govern as a minority, securing the support needed to pass each piece of legislation on an ad hoc basis. The result has been chronic instability and a second general election that largely duplicated the results of the first.

Palace of Westminster

Why didn’t Stephen Harper arrange a coalition instead of governing with a minority? Why didn’t he do a David Cameron? The differences in personality between Harper and Cameron may be factor.  As well, the ideological gulf separating the Canadian Conservatives from their only realistic coalition partner, the hardcore socialist NDP, is far greater than the distance between the British Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. However, the major reason Harper did not negotiate a majority coalition relates to history. Canada has a long history of fairly successful minority governments and almost no history of coalitions. In contrast, Britain had coalition governments for part of the 20^th century, albeit none of them were in living memory, the last coalition having come to an end with the Second World War. The wartime coalition led by Churchill left a fairly positive impression with British people—after all, it had dealt with an existential threat to Britain.

Parliament Hill in Winter

The only real coalition in Canadian history, the Union government of the First World War, is tainted in the historical memory by its association with Conscription and linguistic conflict. Minority governments have fared better in Canada than in the UK. The Pearson government in the 1960s had a productive legislative record and Pearson is now regarded as one of the greatest Canadian Prime Ministers. Even Stephen Harper, a Conservative, compares himself to Pearson.

Pearson

The last minority government in Britain, which existed for a few months in 1974, was a dismal failure, although it must be said that governing Britain in 1974 would be far more challenging than governing Canada in the 1960s, when the economy was booming.

British people have experience with coalitions because the governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all coalitions. Indeed, power-sharing was central to the deal that created the Northern Ireland assembly. No province in Canada has a coalition government, although there was a coalition government of sorts in  Ontario between 1985 and 1987.

Another key difference between Westminster and Ottawa is that nationalist parties are a minor force in UK politics (the Welsh and Scottish nationalists have only a handful of seats, as do the parties that want Northern Ireland to leave the UK). In contrast, there is only one nationalist party in the Canadian parliament and it has lots of seats.

For Canadian reactions to the coalition in the UK, see here, here, and here.