Well, as I said--and I won't try to repeat myself--I assumed that this would be in the bill, and when it wasn't there, I found myself in a quandary, because it's not the sort of thing.... I'm not experienced at drawing up laws. Something that would say that elections in Canada take place under the following conditions unless a government loses the confidence of the House, at which time the Governor General, on advice, will call an election at another date struck me as a natural way to set up the law.
If there were major constitutional concerns, I would have liked them to be addressed in a different way than they were addressed here. I find that given the way the law is worded, with the first item being a negative one, certainly anyone reading this law would say that it doesn't really change anything. Before you actually announce in the law the new situation about election dates, the first item literally, physically, says that nothing will change the ability of the Governor General, on advice, to call an election at any time.
So pedagogically, at the very least, if it really is a major obstacle--and frankly, I haven't been convinced of it, and I'd like to be convinced of it--to doing what I've proposed, surely the law should be written in a way that makes it very clear that the intent is that this power of the Governor General be used as little as possible. If you can't specify the specific circumstances, at least specify the intention.
So that's where my real disappointment is.
Ultimately, if it is true that you cannot do this under our interpretation of the Constitution--which I don't see being the case--and it turns out that the constraints we are capable of imposing prove to be ineffective or are expected to be ineffective, then we can actually change the incentives, as I said, by moving the date, by not allowing the date of normal elections to be fixed. That would be perfectly constitutionally viable, and it would certainly change the incentive situation, even under minority governments, to make premature elections less likely.
I think that's what Canadians would want, but it is an extreme measure, and I'm not necessarily advocating it at this point. I think it's incumbent upon the politicians, the people behind this bill, to persuade me, if I'm representing Canadians in this case, that this bill will change normal ways of holding elections and calling elections. That's what I want to be persuaded of. That's what I think the people of Canada have the right to be persuaded of. The way it's drafted, and the discussion that I've seen, and the reasons that I've seen, frankly, have not done the job.