Impartiality
The Speaker is required to perform his office impartially, but does not resign from his or her party membership upon taking office, as is done in the United Kingdom. Speaker Lucien Lamoureux decided to follow the custom of the Speaker of the British House of Commons and ran in the 1968 election as an independent. Both the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservative Party agreed not to run candidates against him. The New Democratic Party, however, declined to withdraw their candidate. Lamoureux was re-elected and continued to serve as Speaker. However, in the 1972 election, the opposition parties did not come to an agreement and ran candidates against him. Lamoureux was again returned but future Speakers would not repeat his attempt to run as an independent. The opposition parties may have chosen not to follow the 1968 precedent because of how close the election was: it produced a Liberal minority government with just two more seats than the Conservatives.
Read more about this topic: Speaker Of The House Of Commons (Canada)
Famous quotes containing the word impartiality:
“Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)