Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the member that Canadians would generally like fixed term elections. Throughout the last election I heard a lot of people in my riding say that they would like fixed term elections.
A problem could arise because of the type of democracy we have where there can be a minority government and there can be a vote of non-confidence and there can be circumstances beyond anybody's control, but perhaps with goodwill we could limit the times that that happened. It could even be enacted that there would be very limited circumstances where a motion or a bill could be declared to be one of confidence, and the confidence would be limited to a specific vote of non-confidence of the House. That would limit the ability of the governing side to force an unwanted election if it wanted to go to an election prior to the fixed date. That is something we should consider and work on for the long term.
My other concern is that we end up with a system that is a bit like the U.S. system and others where there are protracted electoral campaigns. One of the beauties of the Canadian system is that the election campaign is of a rather short period, with the exception of the last one because it straddled the Christmas and New Year's holiday period which created a rather long campaign. Canadians noticed and commented on it.
A 36 or 40 day campaign seems to be what we like in Canada. If we get to a period where we know what the date is, and we get into an extended one year unofficial campaign and a 36 day official campaign, that could be a risk.
I wonder if the member would care to comment on those points.