Last week’s federal budget marked the informal launch of Canada’s first six-month election campaign, and that’s a problem.

Until the 1980s Canada’s elections were almost two months long. We shrunk them to just over a month because we no longer needed weeks on trains to campaign coast-to-coast, and television made elections national in real-time.

The Harper government, imitating several of their Conservative colleagues at the provincial level, insisted democracy would be strengthened by having a fixed election date every four years. They were wrong. It has had exactly the opposite effect.

The claim was that governing parties have an unfair advantage in choosing when to seek re-election. What the “reformers” failed to understand is that voters get to judge leaders who waste their time and money with unnecessary elections. And they do. Ask former Ontario premier, who was defeated in his snap election in 1990. Given the sullen response to his early election call in Alberta, maybe Jim Prentice will face a similar judgment next week.

Our Constitution grants parliaments five years to do their work in normal circumstances. So for more than a century everyone knew that sometime between year four and year five there was likely to be an election. Strong governments were re-elected — and defeated. The system worked.

Pre-election periods in any democracy are basically “dead time” in decision-making. Public service decision-makers avoid decision-making, and politicians push hard-edged politics, not good policy. The bureaucracy simply goes into autopilot. A long pre-election period equals months of delay in decisions, as all the players wait to find out who the new boss will be and what changes will be demanded.

This weakens democracy: government is less productive, citizens are unhappier with public service performance, and governments inevitably fall farther behind in a digital era that demands rapid change. It’s also very expensive.

One the most dramatic examples of the cost of fixed dates is the United States. The campaign for a president who will take office in January 2017 was launched last month by Ted Cruz, 22 months before Barack Obama’s term is up. It’s expensive running a national campaign apparatus for nearly two years. The Clinton campaign is said to be budgeting a $2-billion campaign.

The Conservative party here is reported to plan to spend a large chunk of its $50-million war chest before the formal launch of the campaign, likely to come around Labour Day for an Oct. 19 election day. During the formal campaign period the party will spend a similar amount at the central and riding level.

The opposition parties cannot match that, but they will each be spending a lot more on staff, ads and research during this extended campaign period. Given that most Canadians do not want to be bothered by parties and candidates six months before they need to decide whom to vote for, it’s also a big waste of money.

But the central folly of this ill-fitting add-on to our system is that governments must ignore the fixed date in any minority parliament because they can be defeated and an election must follow. We have had half a dozen minority governments in Ottawa since the ’60s, long periods when fixed election dates would be meaningless. Given that three out of five Canadians have never voted for this government, but split their votes among three alternatives, we will probably have more.

There are many parts of the modern Westminster parliamentary system that cry out for reform — weakened parliaments need to be revitalized, prime ministerial power should be trimmed, winner-take-all voting systems depress turnout — but setting artificial election dates are not among them.

Let’s hope that after being battered by political campaigning from the first signs of this spring until the first snowfall of our next winter, Canadians will say: “Enough!” And tell our political class to get back to work governing, not campaigning full time.

The permanent war machine that is the goal of too many Canadian political activists today is a curse to democracy, not a strength. These artificially lengthened campaigns give their generals a defence for 24/7 attack messaging.

We elect politicians to govern — hopefully with integrity and competence — not to campaign for their re-election from the morning after election day.

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Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe, was an NDP party strategist for 20 years.

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