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On Jan. 1, the sun will rise on more than 17 million Canadians who, last fall, saw their provincial representatives sent home on the orders of a weak premier.

In September, after a summer of watching her Liberal party decimated by defections and resignations, B.C. premier Christy Clark patched up her cabinet with whoever was left and promptly cancelled the fall sitting: “We have to get out of the precincts of the legislature and really listen to people if we want to make sure that government runs better,” she said at the time.

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Less than a month later, her Ontario counterpart, Dalton McGuinty, similarly barred the doors at Queen’s Park — and then announced he was leaving politics. The reason, he said in his resignation speech, was to tamp down the “heightened rancour” and “political games” of the Ontario legislature as he spent his last months in power drawing up a civil service wage freeze.

Although less well known, Newfoundland and Labrador actually got the ball rolling on empty legislatures at the outset of 2012. After Tory leader Kathy Dunderdale won a firm majority in October 2011, she celebrated by waiting six months to convene the legislature.