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Byelection clock ticking as MPs officially resign. How does it impact Liberals' majority?
The countdown for half a dozen byelections is on as MPs who have signalled they won't be returning to Ottawa in the fall begin to vacate their seats.
Six MPs say they intend to resign over the summer. While voters in those ridings wait to choose replacements, party standings in the House of Commons will shift ever so slightly. Two MPs officially resigned on Friday, just a day after the House of Commons rose for the summer recess.
Once an MP officially resigns, the Speaker has to inform the chief electoral officer of the vacancy, at which point Prime Minister Mark Carney has 11 to 180 days to call a byelection. Byelection campaigns last at least 36 days and can go as long as 50 days.
With MPs resigning over the summer, byelections loom — but the Liberals will keep a thin majority for now.
But the government has had a tendency to schedule multiple byelections at once, meaning Carney may be inclined to wait until all six MPs have officially left.
The Liberals may also try to avoid overlapping campaigns with the Quebec provincial election — which will happen on Oct. 5 unless called earlier — given three of the vacancies will be in that province. These factors combined point to potential voting days sometime in November or December.
In the meantime, Carney's Liberals will maintain a thin majority when September rolls around even after losing three MPs. In the wake of five floor-crossers joining the governing party, the Liberals officially gained majority status following three byelections in April.
With two additional MPs leaving this summer, the Liberals will be sitting at 170 seats when the House resumes sitting in late September. While that would bring them below the threshold for a majority if all the seats were occupied, the distribution of the vacancies means the Liberals will still have more votes in the House than the opposition parties.
When the ballots are counted, the only way the Liberals could slip back into minority territory is if they lose all six byelections. The Liberals will need to win at least one race to maintain a technical majority in the House — where they would need to rely on the Speaker to break ties.
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