Fixed election dates and the governor general's power to grant dissolution.

• Author: McWhinney, Edward

An Amendment to the Canada Elections Act assented to by the Governor General on May 3, 2007, establishes a new, four-year term limit for the House of Commons with its stipulation that federal general elections are to be "held on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election". This article considers whether the new law has any effect on the traditional powers of the Governor General to dissolve Parliament for an election.

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The previous five year ceiling limit for the term of a Parliament had been constitutionally entrenched in s.4 [1] of the Constitution Act of 1982. There is no constitutional reason why the new, four year limit should not be established now by statute, even if it may appear somewhat inelegant from the legislative drafting viewpoint to join it to the provision of a fixed date (the third Monday of October) for the holding of future general elections.

The junction of the new ceiling limit for the House with a fixed election date every four years may explain the suggestion in some quarters that the recent Amendment to the Canada Elections Act may have, intentionally or otherwise, created by legal indirection limitations on the Reserve, Prerogative powers of the Governor General as to the granting or refusal of a Dissolution. That this is not so is put beyond legal doubt by the express, "saving" declaration to the Amendment itself:

S.56.1.[1]: "Nothing in this section affects the powers of the Governor General, including the power to dissolve Parliament at the Governor General's discretion". The decision by Governor General Romeo LeBlanc in 1997, and then by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in 2000, to accede to Prime Minister Chretien's requests for Dissolution in each case after only three and a half years of the then five year term and without any prior defeat of his government brought some public criticisms of a claimed "democratic deficit", and may have contributed politically to the eventual adoption of the Elections Act Amendment of 2007. Certainly one did not hear any very persuasive constitutional grounds put forward by the government to support otherwise premature Dissolutions in 1997 and 2000. In the first case, the facetious comment was offered that an early, June election would allow a summer free to play golf; in the second, more seriously, that the existing political rules of the game allowed a government to go to the polls early to profit...