Joint address (Canada)

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A joint address is a special procedure of the Canadian Parliament, in which the House of Commons and the Senate sit jointly in the House of Commons chambers.

In a joint address, the House of Commons becomes a grand hall, accommodating both Members of the House and the Senate, and guests invited for the occasion. The Speaker of the House of Commons takes the Speaker's chair, with the Speaker of the Senate seated in a chair to his or her right.

Members of the House take their usual seats, while Senators and Justices of the Supreme Court are seated on the floor of the House in front of the clerk's table. Gallery privileges are suspended during a joint address, and access to the galleries is strictly limited to invited guests.

The process is used most commonly when a visiting dignitary, such as a foreign head of state or head of government is addressing the Canadian parliament.

However, on rarer occasions the process may also be used to make a formal and binding request of the Canadian monarch. For example, this was the process used to amend the Constitution of Canada prior to patriation, and was discussed (although not ultimately pursued) as a means of patriation itself. In extreme circumstances, the process may also be used to remove a person previously appointed by the government, such as a judge or an ambassador, from their position if other avenues of doing so have failed.

The first dignitary to adress Parliament was King George VI in 1939. The last person to do so was President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai on September 22, 2006.^[1]