Mr. Speaker, I was talking about how things are done in Great Britain. Calling elections every five years became a tradition that then turned into a convention.
There is no need for a constitutional amendment or a statutory amendment. All that is required is a ministerial order, perhaps endorsed by a vote in the House of Commons, where the Prime Minister would announce, or have announced when Parliament convened in January 1994, that the next election would be held on the third Monday of October 1998.
Knowing this, all the parties would be on equal footing and could prepare accordingly. No party would have an unfair advantage over the others.
We saw, in 1993 in particular, what can come of an unfair advantage. We all recall the PC leadership race. Mrs. Campbell, who was elected leader of the Conservative Party, chose not to ask for the dissolution of Parliament during the summer of 1993, but rather to try to woo the voters, courtesy of the Canadian taxpayers. All summer long, she travelled throughout Canada with her ministers, all expenses paid by the taxpayers, to get the highest possible visibility. Of course, if she had known what the future held for her, she would probably have asked for the writ of election to be made out a lot sooner.
We also had to campaign during the summer, but our expenses were paid not by the taxpayers but by our own political party. The other political parties in this House had to do the same thing, meaning they had to follow the Prime Minister wherever she travelled and provide all the proper answers, but we had no control at all on the time the writ was to be made.
The writ of election was finally made out on September 8, 1993. That is when a new election campaign began. We could say that, from May 1993 to October 25, 1993, we were in a perpetual election campaign.
Obviously, something is not working.
Bill C-250 may not be the appropriate response, but I believe it deserves to be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for further study.
If Americans, for 210 years now, have been able to live with the fact that on the Tuesday of the first week of November, every two years for the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate, and every four years for the President, there is an election at a fixed date, if they have managed to do that with the results that can been seen, and knowing that it does not disrupt political life, we can examine, at least, how to blend both systems in such a way that will allow us to maintain responsible government as well as fairness for political parties during election campaigns.