Bibliographic record
Abstract
Fixed election dates are all the rage in Canada. The UK Parliament is also now considering them. The composite narrative that has emerged is that fixed election dates appear to be working in Canadian provinces and territories but have not yet established themselves federally. This article argues that this account is too simplistic. A deeper analysis reveals that proponents of fixed election date legislation overpromised and underdelivered. Moreover, even where they appear to be working, fixed election date legislation may be contributing to the continuing degradation of the democratic body politic in Canada.This paper addresses three stages of fixed election dates in Canada: their past, present and future. Given that fixed election date legislation only dates back to the beginning of the first decade of this century, this framework may appear overly ambitious. However, I will attempt to place this legislation in its proper context (the past), evaluate how it is operating to date (the present) and prognosticate about its effects (the future). In this vein, I begin by examining the motivations that led to the introduction of fixed election date legislation in the relevant provincial and federal jurisdictions. I will show that fixed election date legislation grew out of the response to the malaise that we have come to term “the democratic deficit”. Next, I examine the current operation of fixed election date legislation both federally and provincially. I analyze Hansard debates as well as government statements to identify and analyze the five main arguments by proponents of fixed election date legislation: fairness, transparency, accountability, improved governance and increased voter turnout. The only argument that comes down wholly in the positive side of the democratic ledger is the governance argument on the better administration of elections by the independent election bodies like Elections Canada. The other arguments are less conclusive or in the case of voter turnout, have failed to achieve the desired effects. Finally, I turn to the future prospects for fixed election date legislation in Canada. Here, I analyze the legal, political and practical issues surrounding their implementation. I conclude that if fixed election date laws are to have their desired effect, they will produce a transfer of power from the first Minister to the Lieutenant Governors or the Governor General, as the case may be. This raises a host of subsidiary issues that may be detrimental to the relationship between these offices. I conclude by explaining why I think fixed election date legislation is injurious to Canadian democracy and should be repealed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".