I've Got It!!!

I have figured out the mess involving the potential Christmas election. Short and simple, all that talk is nothing more than demagoguing by all the parties. There is a way to avoid it, and I will now provide the answer to the big question: when will the election be?

The best option for all of the parties is for the opposition to gang up and defeat the Liberal government's supplementary on December 8th. In so doing, they will allow the opportunity for a Christmas recess and an election campaign to begin in January. Go back in history to Joe Clark's minority situation; his government was defeated on 13 December 1979, and the federal election did not take place until 18 February 1980. Counting back five weeks, the election campaign would not have started until 14 January 1980. The government generally recesses for Christmas in mid-December so the assumption that Canada would be running without a government over the holidays is of little consequence; if an emergency such as a repeat of last year's tsunami were to occur, exceptional circumstances would prevail that would permit the House to convene and deliberate an appropriate response.
By defeating the December supplemental, all of the opposition parties would be able to avoid being labelled as the ones to "pull the trigger" against the government that necessitated an early election. A campaign that begins in January would have the benefit of the second Gomery Report coming down at the start of February, giving all the parties a mid-campaign boost to their platforms and allowing them to capture the essence of his recommendations and incorporate that into their existing campaign speeches. For the Liberals, they avoid being defeated on the corruption issue, and can point to political opportunism and cowardice on the part of the opposition parties for not living up to their own platitudes. The opposition will lose that component in their campaigns, but they still have their early election and can instead use both Gomery Reports for their benefit while the first one remains on the public's mind. Saving face and sparing the voters a Christmas election should trump that small concern for the opposition parties, while giving the Liberals a small amount of wriggle room and a means to frame the election on their terms. There are positives for all parties involved here, and the relative gains vis-a-vis other confidence issues and election timing are greater for a supplementary non-confidence vote than holding a vote on any of the opposition days.