The history books haven't been consulted but the memory banks of political news junkies have. No one can remember a prime minister visiting the Governor General to launch a federal election camapign at 8:30 in the morning — and on a Sunday to boot.

But we shouldn't be surprised. In the last election campaign, Stephen Harper liked to get an early start on his day.

He was up in front of the reporters and live on the news channels making his announcement every morning. Often that was before 8 a.m. ET and almost always before 9 unless the campaign was in the West.

In 2006, the Liberals and New Democrats were almost always left reacting to the Conservative agenda so watch for them to be up early this time round too. Everyone this time seems to be in early-bird mode.

How early? Well the Conservatives are promising they'll be doing a news conference every morning before the sun rises in Ottawa. At 6 a.m., they'll have a cabinet minister or someone else from the party outlining the day's message, releasing the latest ads or announcing something.

And yes, you'll be hearing from Harper early, too. He is promising to follow up the 6 a.m. message with more press availability and take questions. A total of 10 questions.

The NDP also plans to have Jack Layton up early.

Look for him to try to be first up. After all he's the one who wants to come across as the leader with the most energy. But that is not likely to happen early this week because the New Democrats will be heading to British Columbia to start their campaign.

The Liberals will probably also want to be competitive in that early morning political show but so far the party hasn't gotten back to us with details of its plan.

The Bloc play a different game. Their audience is only in Quebec so watch Duceppe to have a message of the day and, if he is true to past campaigns, he'll be available to the media twice a day.

Another element to the early-bird start is that this campaign will be a comparative sprint. The shortest allowed by law — 35 days. It will be nothing like the almost eight-week campaign of 2006.

—George Hoff