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Introduction
Writing in the late 1980s, C.E.S. Franks argued that party discipline is stronger in Canada than it is in the British House of Commons. Whereas Canadian MPs are largely "trained seals" following the direction of their party leaders, British MPs demonstrate a tendency to vote against the party line (1987: 100-14). A decade later, a comparison of the levels of backbench dissent in the Canadian Liberal government with those of the British Labour government seems to support Franks's observation. The 1997 Parliament in the UK, which has been considered to be relatively "quiet," witnessed 96 rebellions by backbench Labour MPs. Moreover, "the number of [Labour] MPs prepared to vote against the Government at some point in the Parliament was 133, around half of Labour's backbenchers" (Cowley and Stuart, 2003: 318). The figures from Canada's 36th Parliament show a striking contrast, as the total number of Liberal backbenchers who dissented from the party line on at least one occasion is 16. Thus, while in the UK the total percentage of Labour backbenchers dissenting from party lines exceeded 40 percent, for the same time period in Canada the total percentage of Liberal backbench dissenters was 13 (16 out of 124).
Another way of looking at dissent in the two Parliaments during this period is by reference to the total number of government bills that attract dissenting votes. Between 1997 and 2001, the Labour Government introduced 154 bills into Parliament, of which 23 (15%) attracted dissent from the backbenches, while in Canada the Liberal Government introduced 134 bills into Parliament, with 4 bills (3.7%) attracting dissent.
The fact that the levels of backbench dissent differ between the two Parliaments would not be particularly interesting, if not for the high level of similarity between all other aspects of these two systems (Kam, 2001). The two countries' Houses of Commons operate along similar lines, with similar rules and procedures. In fact, from the late 1960s onward, the push in institutional reforms to the Canadian House of Commons has been that of emulating Westminster. As a result, the Canadian House of Commons, as it is presently constituted in terms of the vast proportion of procedures and institutional structure, mirrors that of Westminster.
This paper aims to explain why the voting...