MONTREAL — If Jean Chrétien were still prime minister, Canada would likely have gone to the polls as the country was coming together after the Parliament Hill shooting and on the heels of a fiscal update that promised a balanced federal budget and imminent tax cuts for families late last fall.

Never one to dither over election timing, Chrétien chose his campaign windows at the early end of the calendar — when he still had a lot of options and when his rivals tended to be least prepared. The former Liberal prime minister called two elections before his majority governments reached their fourth anniversary in office.

Nor was he one to let waves of national emotion go to partisan waste. The state funeral for Pierre Elliott Trudeau was barely over when Chrétien called the 2000 election.

Rookie Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day had been leader of the official Opposition for only a few months when the writ was dropped.

The close race that the polls predicted never materialized.

Chrétien, of course, did not have to bother with the niceties of a fixed-date election law. The adoption of that regimen — shortly after Stephen Harper came to power — was meant to prevent future prime ministers from manipulating the calendar to their political advantage.

How is that working out?

Less than 15 days into the year and a short month after the prime minister categorically told the CBC that he was not contemplating a spring election, speculation is once again rampant that Harper could jump the gun and send Canada to the polls before July 1.

A deteriorating economic picture that is threatening to play havoc with the government’s fiscal plan and to sour the mood of the voters on the Conservative record is the latest source of inspiration for the speculation.

In fact, it may be late in the game to abandon the legally set, albeit non-binding, Oct. 19 voting day.

The Conservative government has already deployed considerable resources in anticipation of a fall battle.

Last fall Harper committed billions of dollars to a round of tax cuts for families.

The first cheques are expected to roll out in July, close enough to the actual campaign for the government’s largesse to still be on voters’ radar at the time of the October vote.

Between now and then, the tax cuts will be advertised at public and not party expense.

Their delivery is meant to fulfill one of the main Conservative commitments of the last election. In 2011, Harper promised to give families additional tax relief once the federal budget was balanced.

Fair enough, except that the tax cuts were put in the window before the books were actually clear of red ink.

The political calculation behind that involved cutting the opposition parties off at the pass by pre-spending whatever funds they might commit to their own platform promises.

But here’s the rub. It is no longer clear that the pre-election spending Harper is set to unleash next summer best fits the bill of a flagging economy.

A sharp drop in oil prices may delay the return to a balanced federal budget by a few years. Even if the government covers the shortfall with the contingency fund it has set aside, the pre-election tax cuts stand to severely and permanently curtail the federal capacity to stimulate the economy.

If there ever was a notion that a fixed-date election law would prevent a prime minister from using the considerable means at his disposal to give his party an edge on the competition, the permanent campaign mode that has for months presided over every move on Parliament Hill should have dispelled it.

If anything the fixed election date has made the public policy debate even more subservient to short-term partisan interests than was the case in the days when prime ministers arbitrarily set the date of the vote.

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It is easier to control the environment of a six-week campaign than a year-long one. The margin for policy error is larger.

When all is said and done the side effects of the remedy of a fixed-date election law are turning out be more harmful to sound policy-making than the ills it was meant to cure.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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