House of Bills: Special Parliamentary Dissolution Edition!

Good day, Bill-watchers and readers of Know How. We’re chiming in here because, as most of you know, the 43rd Parliament of Ontario has been dissolved as of Tuesday, January 28, 2025, at 4:00 pm. As a result, there are no planned meetings of the House, and the next House of Bills post will not appear in your inbox March 10, 2025, as we’d originally announced. Instead, a general election will take place on February 27, 2025, and House of Bills will resume once the 44^th Parliament is established and legislature is back in session. Click through for more information about parliamentary dissolution, and a roundup of election law resources. 

In September 2021, the Great Library published this article about prorogation, which is the process by which a Parliament brings a particular session to an end with a formal termination. For our purposes today, it’s most important to note that dissolution is not the same as prorogation of Parliament. Although both bring a session to an end, with prorogation, the government is released from parliamentary duties until the next parliamentary session is summoned, whereas dissolution is followed by a general election and the formation of a newly elected Parliament. 

See the explanations of Prorogation and Dissolution by the office of the Ontario Lieutenant Governor, as well as the Parliamentary Cycle section of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice manual, for more on the difference between the processes at the respective levels of government.

To learn more about election law in Ontario and Canada, see the following Great Library and Ontario Legislative Assembly materials (all links are to catalog records, except where indicated otherwise): 

See you here in March sometime, for more Bill progress excitement brought to you by the Great Library of the Law Society of Ontario.