Mr. Speaker, I will comment on my hon. colleague's question but I first want to finish my last thought before I sat down.
When voters know when an election will occur and can be certain about it, then they are less likely to be caught off guard. They can make preparations to vote even if they are out of the country. They could contact the local returning officer with their addresses if they are overseas or out of the riding, which could improve participation rates.
I thank my colleague for his endorsement of the principle behind the bill. As he knows, the Ontario government has adopted similar legislation, as has Newfoundland and Labrador and British Columbia. To the best of my knowledge, none of those jurisdictions have done anything to restrict the ability of the premier to indicate that a particular vote will be a vote of non-confidence.
If a piece of legislation were to put such a provision in place, that would take a constitutional convention of very long standing in our House, in every province in this country, and in Britain, the mother of Parliaments, and deviate from that. It is the precedent that continues to exist in Australia, in New Zealand and in every country and subnational unit that has the Westminster system. We would abandon that convention and move to something else.
In particular, we would move in a way that ensures the courts would be able to get involved in determining whether a vote of confidence was valid or whether a call for an election was valid. I think that is a dangerous thing to do.
If the member feels strongly about this, there is a solution within the current conventions. Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that the present government or a future government is defeated on some matter of confidence. The opposition parties could try to get a vote of confidence in the government separately. In practice, voting non-confidence in the government's main policies and then indicating that they actually have confidence in the government, they would have to think about whether they want to do that, but that is one way of doing it.
Incidentally, I do not think it would work that way if the opposition parties tried to defeat the government on a money bill. I think the convention there is even more powerful, that Parliament's fundamental role is to provide supply to the government.
The other thing opposition parties need to consider is that if they do defeat the government they always have the option of trying to form a government themselves in cooperation with other parties, if they think they can do that. The member should keep that in mind.