“Double Shuffle” manoeuvre (1858)

In August 1858 the George-Étienne Cartier and John A. Macdonald ministry came back into power after a defeat that had resulted in the famous two-day George Brown–Antoine-Aimé Dorion administration. The Cartier–Macdonald ministry resorted to a device called the “double shuffle.” In a strict interpretation of the law that dispensed with re-election for a minister called to another ministerial post within one month after his resignation, the ministers first accepted portfolios different from those held in the former government and then the next day resumed their former offices, thus being freed from the obligation to be re-elected. The manoeuvre was legal under the existing law, but it looked like sharp practice and was widely condemned.