Obstruction in Ontario and the House of Commons‪.‬

Chris Charlton is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Toronto. In parliamentary government there is a constant tension between the government's right to govern and the opposition's right to oppose. But when does legitimate opposition become obstruction? This article examines some of the problems of defining obstruction and compares the incidence of obstruction using data from the House of Commons and the Ontario Legislative Assembly. Data used in the article are drawn from research for the author's doctoral dissertation on legislative obstruction in the House of Commons and the Ontario Legislature.