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House Cheers As First Black Speaker Is Dragged To Chair After One Round Of Voting [1]

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Date: 2023-10-04  

Greg Fergus has been elected Speaker in a secret ballot of members of the House of Commons of Canada following the resignation of the former Speaker in a scandal. A former WWII anti-Soviet fighter who had been invited to the speech given by Ukrainian President Zelenskiy turned out to have served in a Nazi division.

Mr Speaker Fergus was elected by the “single transferable vote” or “ranked choice” voting system and is the first black Canadian to hold the post. The vote was supervised by the “Dean of the House”, the longest continuous serving MP who announced the result and invited the newly elected Speaker to take the Chair. By tradition the new Speaker is “dragged reluctantly” to the podium and this time he broke free from his escort to greet a colleague. This tradition goes back to the British House of Commons

This custom has its roots in the Speaker's function to communicate the Commons' opinions to the monarch. Historically, if the monarch didn't agree with the message being communicated then the early death of the Speaker could follow. Therefore, as you can imagine, previous Speakers required some gentle persuasion to accept the post.

The Speaker is supposed to be politically neutral. In the UK he or she is by convention not opposed at a General Election (at least by the main political parties) and in the “Party” description is listed as “Speaker seeking re-election” on the ballot paper. Mr Speaker Fergus was escorted from the Bar of the House by Liberal Party Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau and Leader of the Opposition (i.e. the second largest party in the house) Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party of Canada.

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