In 2025, Canada’s 342 MPs, representing 41 million people and overseeing a $586 billion budget, sat for the fewest number of days since 1937 and passed only seven bills
The House of Commons sat for just 72 days in 2025; the least that Canada has used its Parliament in more than 80 years.
The year’s tally was lower even than in 2021, when the House of Commons saw its sitting calendar obliterated by COVID-19 lockdowns. In the end, however, that year still managed 95 sitting days.
To find a lighter parliamentary calendar, the most recent record would be in 1937, when MPs sat for just 62 days, according to an online database maintained by the Parliament of Canada.
But the MPs of 1937 had a much smaller government to oversee. There were 245 of them representing 11 million people, and they were in charge of a federal budget equivalent to about $8 billion in 2025 dollars.
The 45th Parliament, by contrast, is 342 members representing 41 million people and overseeing a budget that just came in at $586 billion.
Nevertheless, across the entirety of 2025 those 342 MPs passed just seven bills.
One was the federal budget. Another was a bill to extend Canadian citizenship to foreign nationals with Canadian-born parents. Another was the One Canadian Economy Act, which extended extraordinary powers to Prime Minister Mark Carney to exempt resource projects from environmental and other reviews.
The other four were a mixture of routine supply bills and minor amendments, such as a Bloc Québécois bill forbidding the Canadian government from decreasing dairy tariffs as a condition of free trade negotiations.
The cause of the low sitting days is largely owed to the turmoil surrounding the final departure of former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Rather than resigning outright in the face of a caucus revolt, Trudeau prorogued Parliament for three months until a replacement Liberal leader could be selected.
Across the more normal years of 2022 and 2023, the House of Commons convened for an annual average of 122 days.
Given that the House of Commons doesn’t typically sit on weekends, this works out to about 25 weeks per year of Parliament being in session. Put another way, the entire length of a typical NHL season is roughly equivalent to the amount of time each year that Parliament Hill spends in recess.
