House of Commons of Canada


The House of Commons of Canada is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the bicameral legislature of Canada.
The House of Commons is a democratically elected body whose members are known as members of Parliament. The number of MPs is adjusted periodically in alignment with each decennial census. Since the 2025 federal election, the number of seats in the House of Commons has been 343.
Members are elected by simple plurality in each of the country's electoral districts, which are colloquially known as ridings. MPs may hold office until Parliament is dissolved and serve for constitutionally limited terms of up to five years after an election. Historically, however, terms have ended before their expiry and the sitting government has typically dissolved parliament within four years of an election according to a long-standing convention. In any case, an act of Parliament now limits each term to four years. Seats in the House of Commons are distributed roughly in proportion to the population of each province and territory. However, some ridings are more populous than others, and the Canadian constitution contains provisions regarding provincial representation. As a result, there is some interprovincial and regional malapportionment relative to the population.
The British North America Act 1867 created the House of Commons, modelling it on the British House of Commons. The lower of the two houses making up the parliament, the House of Commons, in practice holds far more power than the upper house, the Senate. Although the approval of both chambers is necessary for legislation to become law, the Senate only occasionally amends bills passed by the House of Commons and rarely rejects them. Moreover, the Cabinet is responsible primarily to the House of Commons. The government stays in office only so long as they retain the support, or "confidence", of the lower house.
The traditional meeting chamber of the House of Commons is in the Centre Block of the Parliament Hill complex in Ottawa. However, as of 2025, Centre Block is undergoing renovations; the House of Commons is therefore meeting in a temporary chamber in the West Block of the complex.

Etymology

The term derives from the Anglo-Norman word communes, referring to the geographic and collective "communities" of their parliamentary representatives and not the third estate, the commonality. This distinction is made clear in the official French name of the body, '. Canada and the United Kingdom remain the only countries to use the name "House of Commons" for a lower house of parliament. The body's formal name is: The Honourable the Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled'''.

History

The House of Commons came into existence in 1867, when the British Parliament passed the British North America Act 1867, uniting the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into a single federation called Canada. The new Parliament of Canada consisted of the monarch, the Senate and the House of Commons. The Parliament of Canada was based on the Westminster model. Unlike the UK Parliament, the powers of the Parliament of Canada were limited in that other powers were assigned exclusively to the provincial legislatures. The Parliament of Canada also remained subordinate to the British Parliament, the supreme legislative authority for the entire British Empire. Greater autonomy was granted by the Statute of Westminster 1931, after which new acts of the British Parliament did not apply to Canada, with some exceptions. These exceptions were removed by the Canada Act 1982.
From 1867, the Commons met in the chamber previously used by the Legislative Assembly of Canada until the building was destroyed by fire in 1916. It relocated to the amphitheatre of the Victoria Memorial Museum – what is today the Canadian Museum of Nature, where it met until 1922. Until the end of 2018, the Commons sat in the Centre Block chamber. Starting with the final sitting before the 2019 federal election, the Commons sits in a temporary chamber in the West Block until at least 2028, while renovations are undertaken in the Centre Block of Parliament.

Leadership

Standings in the 45th Canadian Parliament

Ceremonial and Constitutional officers

Following an election the House of Commons elects a presiding officer, known as the speaker, at the beginning of each new parliamentary term, and also whenever a vacancy arises. Formerly, the prime minister determined who would serve as speaker. Although the House voted on the matter, the voting constituted a mere formality. Since 1986, however, the House has elected speakers by secret ballot. The speaker is assisted by a deputy speaker, who also holds the title of chair of Committees of the Whole. Two other deputies—the deputy chair of Committees of the Whole and the assistant deputy chair of Committees of the Whole—also preside. The duties of presiding over the House are divided between the four officers aforementioned; however, the speaker usually presides over Question Period and over the most important debates.
Officers of the House who are not members include the clerk of the House of Commons, the deputy clerk, the law clerk and parliamentary counsel, and several other clerks. These officers advise the speaker and members on the rules and procedure of the House in addition to exercising senior management functions within the House administration. Another important officer is the sergeant-at-arms, whose duties include the maintenance of order and security on the House's premises and inside the buildings of the parliamentary precinct.. The sergeant-at-arms also carries the ceremonial mace, a symbol of the authority of the Crown and the House of Commons, into the House each sitting. The House is also staffed by parliamentary pages, who carry messages to the members in the chamber and otherwise provide assistance to the House.
The term member of Parliament is usually just used only to refer to elected members of the House of Commons, even though the Senate is also a part of Parliament. Members of the House of Commons may use the post-nominal letters "MP". The annual salary of each MP, as of 2024 was $203,100; members may receive additional salaries in right of other offices they hold. MPs rank immediately below senators in the order of precedence.

Committees

The Parliament of Canada uses committees for a variety of purposes. Committees consider bills in detail and may make amendments. Other committees scrutinize various Government agencies and ministries.
Potentially, the largest of the Commons committees are the Committees of the Whole, which, as the name suggests, consist of all the members of the House. A Committee of the Whole meets in the Chamber of the House but proceeds under slightly modified rules of debate. Instead of the speaker, the chair, deputy chair, or assistant deputy chair presides. The House resolves itself into a Committee of the Whole to discuss appropriation bills, and sometimes for other legislation.
The House of Commons also has several standing committees, each of which has responsibility for a particular area of government. These committees oversee the relevant government departments, may hold hearings and collect evidence on governmental operations and review departmental spending plans. Standing committees may also consider and amend bills. Standing committees consist of between sixteen and eighteen members each, and elect their chairs.
Some bills are considered by legislative committees, each of which consists of up to fifteen members. The membership of each legislative committee roughly reflects the strength of the parties in the whole House. A legislative committee is appointed on an ad hoc basis to study and amend a specific bill. Also, the chair of a legislative committee is not elected by the members of the committee but is instead appointed by the speaker, normally from among the speaker's deputies. Most bills, however, are referred to standing committees rather than legislative committees.
The House may also create ad hoc committees to study matters other than bills. Such committees are known as special committees. Each such body, like a legislative committee, may consist of no more than fifteen members. Other committees include joint committees, which include both members of the House of Commons and senators; such committees may hold hearings and oversee government, but do not revise legislation.
Current committees:
Former committees:

Composition

The House of Commons is composed of Members of Parliament, each of whom represents a single geographic constituency called an electoral district. The constitution specifies that each province is entitled to one MP for every unit of population it has, or part thereof, but additional MPs are allocated according to various clauses described below. Territorial representation is independent of the population; each territory is entitled to one seat.
The number of MPs is adjusted periodically through a process called redistribution conducted in alignment with each decennial census. Since 2025, when the most recent redistribution took effect, there have been 343 MPs, distributed by province and territory as follows:
ProvincePopulation
Total MPsAverage population per MP
Ontario14,223,942122116,589
Quebec8,501,83378108,998
British Columbia5,000,87943116,299
Alberta4,262,63537115,206
Manitoba1,342,1531495,868
Saskatchewan1,132,5051480,893
Nova Scotia969,3831188,126
New Brunswick775,6101077,561
Newfoundland and Labrador510,550772,936
Prince Edward Island154,331438,583
Total for provinces36,873,821340108,452
Northwest Territories41,070141,070
Yukon40,232140,232
Nunavut36,858136,858
Total for territories118,160339,387
National total36,991,981343107,848

Section 51 of the Constitution Act, 1867 specifies how seats are to be distributed among the provinces in proportion to population, subject to the following exceptions:
  • Firstly, the "senatorial clause" guarantees that each province will have at least as many MPs as senators. This provision was added to the constitution in 1915.
  • Secondly, the "grandfather clause" guarantees each province has at least as many Members of Parliament now as it has had since the 2015 election. This clause was added in 1985, when it originally set the floor for each province as the number of MPs it had in 1985, but it was amended in 2022 to be the number of members in the 43rd Canadian Parliament.
  • Finally, the "representation rule" ensures that any province that has historically been over-represented in proportion to its population remains so, even if application of the other provisions would result in it shifting into being under-represented. This clause was added in 2011.
As a result of these clauses, smaller provinces that have experienced a relative decline in population have become over-represented in the House. Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta are under-represented in proportion to their populations, while Quebec's representation is close to the national average. The other six provinces are over-represented. The "representation rule" was added in 2011 with the intent of adding a de facto backstop to ensure that the disproportionate representation afforded those six provinces, which are all majority English-speaking, did not result in an overall linguistic bias in the composition of the House of Commons by ensuring French-speaking Quebec obtained sufficient additional MPs of its own to always remain just under the national average.
In Canada, the calculation of provincial representation considers the entire permanent population rather than citizens or eligible electors, in effect giving children and adults who do not qualify to vote equal weight to registrable persons. The electoral quotient had been 111,166 for the redistribution of seats after the 2011 census and is adjusted following each decennial census pro rata, by population change, since the previous decennial census. The population of the province is then divided by the electoral quotient giving the base provincial-seat allocation. The "special clauses" are then applied to increase the number of seats for certain provinces, bringing the total number of seats, now, to 343.
Following the apportionment of seats between the provinces, boundary commissions, appointed by the federal government for each province, have the task of drawing the boundaries of the electoral districts in each province.