ANALYSIS: Will anyone miss fixed election dates?

You had to like the spirit of the new law.

It’s June 2004, less than a year into Dalton McGuinty’s first year as premier. To date, Ontario premiers have enjoyed one of the most imperial powers of any democracy. Yes, the Constitution limited governments to a maximum five-year term. But premiers could essentially decide to call elections whenever they wanted within that window. And, of course, they exercised that power when it was most beneficial to their re-election prospects.

Most seemed to think calling elections around the four-year mark was the best approach. The thinking was: get all the hard stuff out of the way in the first couple of years, roll out some good news announcements over the last two years, then call an election in hopes of renewing the mandate.

That wasn’t set in stone: if calling an election after three years, to take advantage of buoyant polls, seemed advisable, then early to the polls we’d go. It might not have been the fairest approach, but these folks weren’t idiots. The idea, after all, […] This is an excerpt. Read the full piece on the TVO website >