This calendar goes as far back as December 3, Previous business can be consulted by selecting relevant links on this page. In the House, Members come together to make laws, hold the government to account and decide on the affairs of the country.
In committees, Members undertake studies on departmental spending, legislation and issues related to their mandate, after which they report their conclusions to the House. At the start of a new session, committees may not take up the responsibilities assigned to them until their members have been named and a chair is duly elected. Standing Order 1 provides that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs shall prepare and report to the House the lists of Members to compose the standing committees and standing joint committees.
Once the report has been approved by the House, a meeting of each standing and standing joint committee is convened within ten sitting days by the Clerk of the House, for the purpose of electing a Chair. Members further Canada's interests at international conferences and meetings and promote democracy, economic and social ties with other nations. Parliamentary Business Parliamentary Business - Home. The House. Procedural Reference Material Library of Parliament.
Parliamentary Diplomacy. Members - Home. Members and Roles. Related Information. Participate - Home. About the House - Home. Transparency and accountability. Under the traditional arrangement, upon receipt of the message summoning Members to attend in the Senate, the Speaker, accompanied by Members and House staff, has proceeded to the Senate Chamber.
Following the report of the speech and the appointment of the Address in Reply Committee, the House has generally adjourned. Alternatively, condolence motions may then be moved and the sitting may be suspended or the House adjourned as a mark of respect. On the opening day of the 2nd Session of the 44th Parliament the House continued to meet to deal with business that it wished to be considered by the Senate.
The Governor-General or the Sovereign may open Parliament in person but neither has done so. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has, on three occasions, made the speech to both Houses of Parliament at the commencement of a new session; the 3rd Session of the 20th Parliament on 15 February , and the 2nd Sessions of the 28th Parliament on 28 February and the 30th Parliament on 8 March The constitutional and parliamentary nature of prorogation is described in the following passage from May :.
Prorogation terminates a session of Parliament; a dissolution terminates a Parliament and thus there must be a general election. The decision only to prorogue the Parliament therefore does not attach to it the same significance as a decision to dissolve the House of Representatives. There is little guidance afforded by the constitutional provisions or conventions as to when or how often prorogation should take place or any established criteria regarding the taking of a decision to prorogue.
While section 5 of the Constitution gives the Governor-General authority to prorogue the Parliament, the decision to prorogue follows the advice of the Government of the day. Parliaments have often consisted of only one session without a prorogation intervening, and this is now usual. A prorogation does not necessarily precede a dissolution as is commonly the case in the United Kingdom, although this has been the recent practice.
Between and Parliaments were not expressly prorogued prior to dissolution and the holding of a general election. Since then the Parliament has been prorogued before the dissolution of the House of Representatives.
Parliament is prorogued by the Governor-General who may do so by proclamation or otherwise. The 2nd Session, in turn, was prorogued by the Governor-General in person on 22 October Since all prorogations have been made by proclamation published in the Commonwealth Gazette and, since , read publicly at the front of Parliament House by the Official Secretary to the Governor-General, consistent with the practice with a proclamation of dissolution.
The proclamations proroguing the 36th and 37th Parliaments and were read at the front of Parliament House immediately before the proclamations dissolving the House of Representatives. The Father of the House is the MP with the longest continuous service who is not a minister.
The order in which MPs swear in can be important: at the point at which the previous Father of the House ceases to be a member of the Commons, if more than one Member with continuous service entered the House at the same election and no Member has longer continuous service, the Member who was sworn in first would become the new Father of the House.
MPs and Peers may be sworn in in two ways, in accordance with the Oaths Act :. The oath or affirmation must be made in English. However, MPs and Peers may repeat it in any other language. Newly-sworn MPs are also invited to inform the House of Commons authorities of the way in which they wish their name to appear in official publications. Swearing-in in the House of Lords is similar to the process in the Commons.
In , the then-Clerk of the House told the then-Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that under the normal arrangements it takes around half an hour to swear in around 90 MPs. There are several ways in which the process can be expedited if necessary, with the agreement of the Speaker. In his evidence, the then-Clerk told the then-Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that if this last device were used, the whole process could probably be concluded in two to two-and-a-half hours.
The ultimate decision-maker on arrangements for House of Commons swearing-in is the Speaker, who under the Parliamentary Oaths Act must be in the Chair for the process. Who is the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery? It is simultaneously a parliamentary post and a position in the Ministry of Justice, held by a senior civil servant. These are issued from the office of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, by direction of the Lord Chancellor, to all Peers who are entitled to seats in the Lords. This is a way of organising parliamentary business and time.
A parliamentary session is ended by the prorogation of Parliament. Broadly, Parliament is prorogued from one date, when the session ends, to another in the future, when the next session starts. Formally, prorogation is done by the Queen, in a Proclamation issued through the Privy Council as an Order in Council.
However, the Queen acts on the advice of the government, and in practice prorogation is a government decision. The prorogation Proclamation normally specifies a small range of dates within which prorogation will take place, and the government then makes arrangements in Parliament to bring the session to a close on one of the specified days.
Formally, the Queen also sets the date for the start of a new session of Parliament. The way in which this occurs depends on the circumstances:. Once a Proclamation proroguing Parliament has been made, the Queen may by a further Proclamation alter the date previously set for the start of the new session, to either delay it or bring it forward. This section was added to the page on 20 December and last updated on 9 May Reflecting this, when a new session opens it is normally referred to by a title referencing two calendar years for example, the session.
However, there is no minimum or maximum length for a parliamentary session. Apart from sessions which are ended only by a dissolution the date of which is automatic under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act , the government has discretion to bring a session to an end at any point or not to do so , to suit its preferred management of parliamentary business. The session lasted for less than a month, while three recent sessions ran over three calendar years , , There is also no requirement on the government to announce in advance if it is planning a session lasting other than a year.
However, in , and it indicated within months or days after the general election held in those years that it was planning the first session of the new Parliament to be a two-year one. Previously, sessions used normally to end and start in October or November each year. However, after passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act FTPA , which established that general elections would normally be held in May , the timetable was switched so that sessions now normally end and start in the period between April and June.
This generated sessions of roughly equal one-year duration. The Parliament, and the early general election which ended it, disrupted this pattern. House of Commons Library data show that the session started later in the year than any since at least A carry-over motion for a bill is moved by the government, in the House where the bill is under consideration. A carry-over motion can be moved for a bill only if the bill is a government bill, and only if the bill is still in the House where it was introduced.
A carry-over motion may save a bill only into the next session, and a bill carried-over into one new session cannot be carried-over again. And even if a bill has been carried over, it will fall if proceedings on it have not been completed within a calendar year of its introduction. In effect, the Lords cannot delay enactment of a public bill for more than one session, as long as the total time since the Commons first gave it a 2nd Reading is at least 13 months.
When a parliamentary session ends, most undischarged business in the Chambers of both Houses falls. Where parliamentary business is governed by session-based rules, very long or very short sessions can cause difficulties, as occurred in the Parliament with respect to several of these provisions. This section was added to the page on 20 December and last updated on 19 May This is a break during a parliamentary session. A recess takes place when the House adjourns to a day later than the next regular sitting day.
This is the break between parliamentary sessions. As a parliamentary session normally lasts for around a year, prorogations normally take place roughly one year apart.
However, a prorogation may take place at any time during the life of a Parliament. A prorogation normally lasts for only a few days. The chart at the end of this section shows the lengths of prorogations since Either move has the effect of lengthening the period when Parliament is not operational.
This is the period when there is no Parliament prior to a general election. Members of the House of Lords remain so, but there are no MPs. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act FTPA sets five years as the maximum length of a Parliament , so by definition there must be a dissolution at least once every five years. A dissolution lasts from the day it takes place, before a general election, to the first meeting of the new Parliament after the general election. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act , dissolution takes place at the start of the 25th working day before the date of any general election held under the Act.
By definition, all three types of non-sitting period mean a halt to business in the Chamber of the relevant House. Otherwise, the three types of non-sitting period are very different. Recess, prorogation and dissolution differ in terms of the way in which they are brought about and their dates established :. Recess, prorogation and dissolution also have different effects on various types of parliamentary business:.
This section was added to the page on 20 April and last updated on 9 May A recall is the occasion on which the House of Commons or House of Lords sits on a day or at a time when it was previously scheduled to be in recess. Technically, each House is recalled separately, and on the recall day it is possible for only one House to sit. However, in practice, the issue in a potential recall situation is almost always whether to recall the Commons; and if the Commons is recalled the Lords now almost always is also, if it is not already sitting.
A recall most often takes place when there is a crisis or other major national or international event, or when a parliamentary decision is required. Occasionally, there may be a recall in order to resolve a procedural issue.
Once a recess has started, a recall is almost the only way for either House to sit on a day earlier than the day on which it was previously scheduled to return. The exceptions are either occasions triggered when ministers make emergency Statutory Instruments under the Civil Contingencies Act , in which case the two Speakers must arrange for both Houses to sit; or they involve the Queen, who in certain circumstances can declare under the Meeting of Parliament Act that Parliament shall meet during an adjournment.
A recall can only take place during a session of Parliament. If Parliament is prorogued or dissolved , other — even rarer — mechanisms have to be used if it needs to meet. In practice, it would be unlikely for the Lord Speaker to recall the Lords if the government opposed the move. In both Houses, the Speaker sets the date and time for the recalled House to meet. There is no minimum period between the Speaker ordering the recall and the recall taking place.
In the House of Commons, on a day on which the House is recalled the business to be conducted is decided by the government in the normal way. The Order Paper previously published for the next scheduled sitting day is not transferred to the recall day: on the day of the recall, the government publishes a new Order Paper for the recall sitting. At the end of the recall day, each House must agree in the normal way on the date of its next meeting that is, the date to which it is then adjourned. This section was added to the page on 18 August and last updated on 9 May The House of Commons has been recalled on 34 occasions since The current Standing Order governing the process was agreed in This section was added to the page on 18 August and last updated on 18 August It does this by establishing:.
The expiry of the roughly five-year term established in the FTPA automatically triggers a general election, and therefore also the dissolution of Parliament beforehand. The expiry of the five-year fixed term is how the general election was triggered. The FTPA also establishes mechanisms by which a general election, and therefore a preceeding dissolution, may take place under the Act earlier than the end of the default five-year term.
Any of the provisions of the FTPA may of course be amended or overridden by another, later, Act of Parliament — including an Act which requires a general election to be held before the default date set by the FTPA.
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