The fixed-election date has long been mythologized by democratic reform enthusiasts as this great means of levelling playing fields and constraining the powers of a sitting prime minister or premier, and provides stability to the electoral cycle.  Never mind that his particular Americanism doesn't really quite fit in our system of government, but it's better trust us!  As we've learned in the years since provinces started implementing these, and now the federal government, it's true effects are more to the effect of prolonging the agony and democracy is no better off.

The usual example of why this kind of constraining power is necessary tends to be how Jean Chrétien would call "early" elections when he felt he had electoral advantage, and that this was to the detriment of good democratic practice.  Never mind that it has yet to be demonstrated how a government has attained much in the way of short-term advantage by calling snap elections remember that Chrétien lost seats when he called one early election.  The countervailing example remains more prominent, in Ontario where Liberal premier David Peterson called a very early election and was soundly defeated, his party being forced into opposition for 13 years.  In other words, the demonstrated need for such laws are simply non-existent because the system has proven to be self-correcting.  To argue otherwise sounds a lot like sour grapes and sore loserism.

Of course, evidence didn't stop the creation of such "feel-good" fixed election laws, but remember that we're not America, nor is ours a congressional system.  In order to kludge together fixed election date legislation that would not constrain the powers of the Governor General or the lieutenant governors across the country, what has been enacted has proved to be a series of sham laws that are symbolic at best.  This was amply demonstrated by Stephen Harper in 2008 when he advised the Governor General to call an early election despite the fixed date better to pull the plug than be defeated, as would likely have happened in a hostile minority parliament, and no, the courts were not going to hear arguments that would constrain the powers of the Crown.

There are real problems with fixed election laws in how they interact with the basic tenets of Responsible Government.  The fundamental principle is that the government of the day must hold the confidence of the House if they want to keep governing.  By enacting these fixed election date laws, it provides a chilling effect to MPs in doing their job with holding the government to account because there is the added pressure of not toppling a government with the tutting about an "early election."  This is also by design, in the hopes that it will somehow force MPs to work together or "be more constructive" in their criticism as opposed to threatening to topple the government, particularly in a minority context.  This particular notion neglects the whole point that MPs are there to hold government to account, and that the system is adversarial by design.  "Working together" is not the point of parliament, and if a government doesn't want to fall, then they need to ensure they retain the confidence of the chamber it's not the job of the opposition to work with them.

The excuse that fixed dates provide stability and allow opposition parties and even Elections Canada to better plan are also excuses that ring hollow because it is built on the presumption that riding associations shouldn't be constantly engaged between elections, or that Elections Canada isn't a competent enough organization to be prepared in the age of the permanent voters list when they don't need to scramble to enumerate the country at the drop of the writ.

And then we get the real reason why fixed election dates are a menace because it means year-long election campaigns.  As if the American experience wasn't excruciating enough, where every other year is an election year for members of the House of Representatives, and we have to deal with a year-long primary process followed by a year-long presidential campaign, suddenly we're looking to replicate it back here.  We've seen it play out in provincial elections, particularly here in Ontario in 2011, and we're living it with the federal campaign that is already in full swing, even though the writ won't drop until the end of summer.  (And no, we're not having an early election, so just stop insisting that it might happen).  Tired of being bombarded by election ads before the writ drops?  Too bad you get to endure it without spending limits until that writ drops, because that's more "fair" and "democratic."

And you can't even claim that these fixed election date laws have prevented the kinds of politicking around election timing either they have simply created a whole new kind of political incentives that allow governments to play "election year" games instead of the perception that a government will call a snap election based on their running high in the polls.  Look at what the current government is doing around the timing of their new "family tax cuts" programme, where the higher child benefit cheques will start rolling out a couple of months before the writ drops a move designed solely so that they can run in the election on the threat that the opposition will claw the money back that is already in these families' pockets.  How is this any better or more "democratic" than letting the government exercise its actual prerogatives of pulling the plug when it wants?

These laws have no place in the Canadian system, and they haven't done anything to improve the democratic discourse in this country.  In fact, the proliferation of brain-dead political advertising is having the opposite effect on the democratic discourse, and the year-long campaigns that fixed election dates engender only further debase our system.  And while we endure another extended exercise in political purgatory, let us hope that this is the last election that we have to do so.