Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a September 20th election despite the prior parliament not being due to expire until 2023 and despite the imminent fourth wave of the pandemic. Millions of Canadians have accordingly been annoyed with the unnecessary thrust of politics into their summer lives. A fixed-election-date law exists, yet it does not supersede the constitutional authority of the Prime Minister to direct the Governor General to call an early election.
"Clearly the powers of the Prime Minister to call premature elections exist, and are being abused, as all of the opposition parties confirm," stated Independent Candidate Stefan Klietsch. "The question is, how do we permanently fix the problem so that no future Prime Minister does the same again? We need to update the Constitution of Canada to fix democracy."
Political science scholars such as the authors of the book
Democratizing the Constitution have suggested that the Constitution of Canada should be amended to require a two-thirds majority of Members of Parliament to vote in favour of any call for an early election or early prorogation. Such a constitutional amendment would require consenting legislation from all of the provinces.
"Changing the Constitution of Canada is not easy," acknowledged Mr. Klietsch. "But real political leaders do not shy away from solving Canadians' problems just because hard work is involved. Real leaders keep acknowledging the problem, in this case abuse of Prime Ministerial power, and they keep trying to solve the problem, in this case by lobbying the provinces for the necessary constitutional amendment. Provincial governments that obstruct democratic improvement will be judged by their own voters accordingly."
"Poor leaders by contrast will make no effort at all to solve the problem that they already admitted to exist. That would include the leadership of the national political parties, who are generally too small-minded and intellectually lazy to so much as speak a word for amending the Constitution, save for the NDP's Senate abolition policy."
Mr. Klietsch concluded, "Improving Canadians' quality of life begins and ends with improving the quality of their democracy. Candidates who will not discuss any opportunity to improve your country's Constitution are merely kicking the can down the road on failures of democracy that affect Canadians like you."
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