JAY GOLDBERG: Stop pretending Canada has fixed election dates

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British Columbia Premier David Eby recently called a snap election, just two years into a majority mandate, bypassing his own province’s fixed election date legislation, in the hope of winning re-election while his rival Conservatives were in disarray.

Much to Eby’s chagrin, the Conservatives quickly got their act together. They appointed a new interim leader; the vast majority of MLAs who left under the party’s former leader have since returned, and most British Columbians aren’t buying Eby’s rhetoric that the election was needed to take on U.S. President Donald Trump.

Eby’s decision to call a snap election, just halfway through his majority mandate, raises the question once again of why fixed election dates, which were first passed into law in B.C. in 2001, exist in Canada’s Westminster system.

There’s no denying that fixed election dates sound great in theory. Setting a specific date for the next election was meant to level the playing field between the opposition parties and the government. Over time, every province and the federal government would come to adopt similar legislation.

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