by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)
Speakers of the assembly are often not household names, yet they arguably perform the most important job in a legislature.
Elected by the other members of the legislature, speakers can be thought of as the chairperson and thus are the ones who “run the meeting” of the assembly. They themselves were usually elected to represent the governing party in the assembly, although there have been several instances in minority governments where an opposition member has been elected to the position. However, once elected, they must remain neutral, effectively eschewing their party allegiance, and they never vote during debates except if there is a tie, in which case they generally side with the government. In fact, in the United Kingdom, speakers explicitly stand as independents, but only a handful — like Lucien Lamoureux, Robert McCready and Nelson Parliament — have done so in the Canadian partisan assemblies. As the legislature’s neutral arbiter, speakers also carry out ceremonial duties on behalf of the assembly.
Some of you may have seen the ceremony when a new speaker is being led to the speaker’s chair, pretending to resist while laughing at the same time, as, of course, they chose to let their name stand for the coveted position. The reason for this fake resistance is explained in the description of the speaker’s role
on the Nova Scotia legislature’s website.
Early on [in British parliamentary history], parliaments had no real power other than to provide funds for the Crown. As such, the Parliament and the Speaker were treated with contempt by the monarchy. Seven speakers were beheaded by the King between 1394 and 1535 for not doing as he wished. As a result, the role of the speaker was not sought after by Members of Parliament as it is today and that history explains why elected speakers feign resistance when they are escorted to the chair.
Let’s admit that the risk of being beheaded by the king wasn’t attractive. Today, the greatest risk speakers face is being removed or forced to resign from the position for lacking either impartiality or good judgement, which can happen if one doesn’t master basic facts of history like Anthony Rota clearly didn’t.
There have been 448 speakers in all the assemblies since Confederation.
Find them all with this search engine. Their political affiliation is indicated even though they were to remain neutral as speakers.
