2021 federal election

[ijmorlan]

There is no illegality involved.  Read the Act.

Right. Which really means that the act is pointless, we might as well get rid of it.

And what I really disliked (and still do) about this act was that seemingly endless 77-day campaign period we got in 2015.

I got curious and read the bill:

https://parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/39-1/b...t/page-ToC

The bill is easier to understand than the Act because one doesn’t have to dig through to figure out what changes the bill made.

Indeed, it doesn’t actually say anything about what the Prime Minister can do. In fact it’s not even clear to me that it actually limits the duration of a Parliament: sure the election “must be held on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election”, but what happens if the Prime Minister just doesn’t advise the Governor General to call the election? And of course since 56.1 (1) explicitly says it doesn’t affect the Governor General, the Governor General is definitely not required to dissolve Parliament at such time. The Governor General might even be inclined not to do so, because it might (I speculate) be considered “political” for them to dissolve Parliament without the advice of the Prime Minister.

Thinking about it, it’s almost like a law written by a non-lawyer and then gussied up by legal staff who probably knew they were writing nonsense but had to proceed because it’s their job. 56.1, a total of 3 lines, is the entire essence of the bill; the rest is just about adjusting the date around holidays etc.; and 56.1 just says what “must” happen with no indication of who must make it happen or what happens if they don’t.

I wonder if there is alternate legislation that could have been passed that actually would have the publicly-announced effect of this legislation? The whole notion of fixed dates doesn’t fit well with the possibility of losing a confidence motion.