Repealing Fixed-Date Election Laws
Nova Scotia, the last province to adopt a fixed-date elections law in 2021, also became the first to repeal one in March 2025. The hegemony of these laws lasted only four years. More significant still, Ontario also repealed its fixed-date elections late in late November 2025 after having initially enacted it twenty years before. Interestingly, both provinces repealed their statutes in the first session after their incumbent premiers called snap elections and won new majorities. Fixed-date election laws did nothing apart from reducing the maximum life of a parliament or legislatures from five years to somewhere between four and five years in a roundabout way. Parliament and the legislatures should simply have enacted laws which directly lowered their maximum lives to four years in wording mimicking s. 4(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, that parliament or a legislature can live “four years after the date fixed for the return of the writs of a general election and no longer.” Ottawa and the other provinces should follow suit and repeal their equivalent laws as well.
Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister
James Bowden's Blog 