In just over two years, we will be going to the polls again here in British Columbia. Nationally, it will be almost three years.
Maybe.
While the municipal elections we just held go like clockwork every four years, provincial and federal elections, thanks to minority governments and the whims of prime ministers and prime ministers, can take place much more often.
Technically, we have terms of up to five years for each government, with legislation mandating shorter periods of four years.
But our leaders see them as mere guidelines, not rules.
Under British parliamentary systems of governance – which we inherited, with the monarchy – the head of the legislature can ask the king’s representative to dissolve all the hullabaloo and call new elections.
It’s if they don’t get a vote of no confidence from the opposition parties, in a minority government, and we’ve had majority minority governments in Ottawa for some time now.
So our political leaders are playing a kind of exhausting election chicken game with their opponents every day of every year.
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Is the opposition weak? Did their new leader miss a recent press conference? Is the economy good, bad, indifferent? Is public trust high or low?
If all goes well for the party in power, it is time to go see the governor general at the federal level or the lieutenant-governor at the provincial level, to call an election.
It is often successful. Conservatives, Liberals and the NDP at various levels have all been able to stage a successful election by timing it right.
But it’s exhausting. We need elections, but we also need time between elections, for the government to deal with real governance.
–MC
British Columbia PoliticsEditorialsElection 2022maple ridgeOpinionPitt Meadows
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