Throne Speeches

I don't think it's sufficiently widely appreciated just how odd the spectacle we have just witnessed in Alberta - a speech from the throne being immediately followed by a dissolution of a legislature at the request of the very government that authored the throne speech - is, so I'm going to explain it. I'll try to be brief.

In a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy, the government has certain legislative privileges. If the Westminster-style democracy in question happens to be a heavily partisan one, then a majority government has virtually unlimited legislative privileges, but that's a cultural issue rather than a structural one, so I'm leaving those privileges aside. What I'm talking about instead is the ability to control the legislative agenda (with a few exceptions) and a monopoly on introducing money bills.

Now, since the government wasn't elected by anybody - rather, it was appointed by somebody who also wasn't elected by anybody - this might seem a little dumb. Which it is, frankly, but not as dumb as you might initially think. Because, in exchange for those legislative privileges, the government needs to get the legislature to sign off, in the most general of all senses, on its agenda. Hence the speech from the throne. That's where the government says "As Her Majesty's government, here's what we plan on using our legislative privileges to do during the coming session." And then the legislators - who were elected - get to decide, via a vote on the speech (which is always a confidence motion) whether they're okay with that agenda, or at least okay enough with that agenda that they're comfortable leaving those legislative privileges in the hands of the current government.

It all makes a certain amount of sense - much more sense, I'd say, than most elements of Westminster-style parliamentary democracies.

Anyway, here in Alberta we just had a speech from the throne. Only instead of following the format I explained above, we got a situation in which the government says "Here's what we plan on using our legislative privileges to do during the coming session," and then, while the legislators were digesting that and deciding whether they were in support of the speech or not, the government was like "also, we're asking Her Majesty to dissolve y'all."

The government is laying out its plans for a non-existent session of the legislature. Weird.