Mr. Speaker, I do not want to suggest that there is any slim chance the next election may not be in October of 2009, but I do think the member raises a good point. I would be the last person to ever engage in either parliamentary questions or issues of the Constitution with the member for Mississauga South, but the concern of course is that, yes, the way the bill is written, there is still every opportunity that the government could force an early election if it felt that was to its advantage.
Whereas this bill is singularly about fixing an election date, I think the prime result of this bill is that Canadians should know when the next election would be, barring a loss of confidence and what would constitute confidence in the House of Commons. The first section of the bill clearly does say:
Nothing in this section affects the powers of the Governor General, including the power to dissolve Parliament at the Governor General's discretion.
There are a lot of questions that need to be hammered out at the committee level in the sense of trying to come up with a bill that we could all support when it comes back to the House, a bill that would actually provide what it says it is going to provide, which is certainty around the timing of elections.