Like always, Madam Speaker, the member across the way makes a very valid point. Sometimes there is a situation like today where there is a new prime minister in the same or governing party. Should the government have the right to seek a mandate? That is something we should look at as a parliamentary committee.
Sometimes it is close to the end of the term where I do not think it is that important that a new mandate be sought. If there was a four year term and this happens well into the third year, the government should go the full four years. However, often it happens in the middle of the term. The member makes a strong argument that we should look at an exception where there should be an election campaign to seek a mandate.
I can think of a number of cases and I recall when Lucien Bouchard went back to be Premier of Quebec. He went back after about a year or so into Premier Parizeau's term. Maybe there should have been an election campaign there where he had to seek a fresh mandate.
This is why there should be a parliamentary committee looking into the fixed date idea. When should the election be? What exceptions might there be? A motion of confidence is certainly one of those exceptions. If the government were to fall on a motion of confidence, under an allotted day, there would not necessarily have to be an election, as the member knows. However, the Governor General could decide to call in someone else to be the prime minister and form a brand new government. That power now exists with the Crown. In all likelihood if the government were to fall, there would be an election, but these are things we should look at.
We should have a fixed election date every four years and parties could even plan their leadership conventions a bit more in accordance with the four year term. The former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, did want to stay much longer. He was pushed out of office and even after he was pushed out of office, he wanted to stay until February of this year, but there were people in the current Prime Minister's entourage who were salivating, wanting the Prime Minister to take over before Christmas. Now they might be wishing he had not because of the sponsorship scandal. But they pushed Jean Chrétien out of office anyways. Jean Chrétien had a mandate and if the Liberal Party would have planned in accordance with that mandate, we would not have to be considering a special election because of a new leader of the Liberal Party.
Some of this is common sense and proper planning. I do not want to speculate on the member's feelings about the current Prime Minister and the former one, but I think his advice to the Liberal Party would have been to have a leadership convention toward the end of its mandate and have a new prime minister within months of the new election campaign. Now, of course, that did not happen and I assume the Liberal Party did not take his advice because I am sure that is the advice he would have given to his party if he were to tell us publicly what he actually did say.