Dear Editor
The system for federal elections in the U.S. is a lot different than what the Canadian system was set up to be. Here, the timing of federal elections has been determined by the Parliament, the Prime Minister and the Governor General, with a proviso that that there should be no more than five years between elections. The actual campaigning would run for only a little over a month before the fate of the candidates would be decided by the voters. It worked fairly well, and was relatively low cost.
In the U. S., federal elections are, by law, set to occur every two years, with each member of the House of Representatives on the line every time, only a third of the senators each time, and the president every other time (each four years). That may have seemed like a good idea at the time. It was automatic, so no one had the power to decide when to have an election that would be best for any particular party. For some time it seemed to work fairly well, too. However, as time has gone by, the actual campaigning has gone on longer and longer, until today they are in a perpetual campaign mode. As soon as one election ends, the campaigning for the next begins - usually with great gusto, and at great expense to the political parties, making it imperative to have as many rich donors as possible. (Thus recalling the old adage, "He who pays the piper calls the tune.")
Lately, a lot of the provinces and the federal government as well seem to have decided to have our Canadian elections on set dates, as is the case in the U.S., with similar results. Suddenly, having rich donors has become a more imperative factor than before, as with our republic to the south. Suddenly, our 2015 federal election is in full swing, set for October a little over a year from now. Of course, our Prime Minister could still call an election before that if he feels it would give his party a better chance of a parliamentary majority. So we now have the less democratic aspects of both electoral systems.
Having each Canadian federal political party get a small government subsidy based on its number of votes in the previous election was a policy designed to reduce each party's necessity for affluent donors. The Harper government has stopped that subsidy, increasing each party's need for donated funding. Having some Conservatives get into legal difficulties for illegal election activities during the last few elections turned out to be rather bad publicity for the party, so we now have a new law, called the Fair Elections Act, which severely reduces the power of elections officials to call perpetrators to account. The cards seem to be stacked in favour of the party in power.
Fortunately, I think most Canadians are smarter than most Americans when it comes to voting. I believe that will be the determining factor in the next election.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
