Duties
The official duties of the deputy prime minister are to answer questions pertaining to overall government policy during Question Period, and to chair the cabinet in the absence of the prime minister. The office has no standing in law, and does not carry any formal duties or tasks; that is, it is without a portfolio, though the prime minister may negotiate or assign specific tasks in conjunction with the title. With the exception of Herb Gray, all deputy prime ministers have held a portfolio alongside this title.
One deputy prime minister, Sheila Copps, attracted controversy in 1993 after asserting that she was "in charge" of government business while the then Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, was out of the country. After she left politics, she wrote that although the position of deputy prime minister is only ceremonial, "very often, the DPM's job was to protect the prime minister from the political damage that Question Period can inflict on a leader," further citing the experience of Erik Nielsen during the Sinclair Stevens scandal.
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Famous quotes containing the word duties:
“The deadly monotony of Christian country life where there are no beggars to feed, no drunkards to credit, which are among the moral duties of Christians in cities, leads as naturally to the outvent of what Methodists call “revivals” as did the backslidings of the people in those days.”
—Corra May Harris (1869–1935)
“The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a “taxing- machine;” to the contented, a “machine for securing property.” Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)