Scrap fixed election date law: N.B. expert

Last Updated: Monday, September 6, 2010 | 5:01 AM ET

By Daniel McHardie, CBC News

Don Desserud, a political scientist at the University of New Brunswick, argues fixed election dates have not brought the promised advantages. (CBC)A political scientist says New Brunswick's experiment with a fixed election date has been a failure and should be scrapped.

Several governments across Canada, including the federal government, have adopted four-year fixed terms.

Proponents argue that fixed terms remove built-in advantages for the incumbent government, levelling the playing field for all political parties in an election campaign.

But Don Desserud, a political scientist at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, writes in an election analysis for CBC News that for any advantages the new system has brought, it has created additional headaches.

"Fixed-date elections make election planning more convenient. However, the price we are paying for this convenience is a system that favours the party in power and serves only to convince the voting public that elections are horrendously boring and nasty affairs," Desserud writes.

"The old system has its faults, but surely those faults can be corrected. I think we should return to the old system."

New Brunswick voters are heading to the polls on Sept. 27, the first Monday four years after the last election.

The election writs were automatically issued Aug. 26 at 12:01 a.m. and did not require the traditional visit by the premier to the lieutenant governor's residence to ask for the legislature to be dissolved.

Premier Shawn Graham's Liberal government approved the fixed-election date law, but it had been an earlier commitment by then-premier Bernard Lord.

Lord abandoned the fixed election date to go to the polls early in 2006, but his Progressive Conservatives eventually lost to Graham's Liberals.

More power

New Brunswick's fixed election date law has created more advantages for incumbent governments, not fewer, according to political scientist Don Desserud. (CBC)Supporters of a fixed election date have insisted the new system helps opposition parties because it removes the ability of the governing party to engineer an election at the time most politically advantageous to it.

Desserud says this has not always worked. For instance, former premiers Lord, in 2006, and Camille Theriault, in 1999, both lost despite choosing to go to the polls before they had to. And now parties are in a perpetual campaign and that does not help smaller ones.

Political parties can only spend $2,000 in pre-writ expenses in each riding, but governments have the ability to travel around in the "phoney campaign" period, making funding announcements that are fully paid by taxpayers.

"During the phoney campaign, separating normal government communication from party campaigning is extremely difficult, if not impossible. The opposition parties do not have the same luxury," he writes.

Uninspiring debate

Knowing the exact date of the next election four years in advance was also supposed to give political parties the ability to put in place a solid election platform. Desserud said the political discourse so far in New Brunswick's 2010 campaign has not achieved any new heights.

"Certainly, neither the PCs nor the Liberals have managed to present anything approaching a vision for the province or a plan to deal with the growing list of serious and difficult issues that the province faces," he writes.

"And by the way, saying that whatever you decide to do, you will first consult the public or strike a commission, is not a replacement for leadership or vision."

The only advantage that fixed election dates have brought the province is the ability for parties to recruit candidates easier because they can plan better.

But the political scientist said there is no objective way to determine whether there is a better roster of candidates running for the political parties in 2010 than in previous elections.