Yeah, Legal Opinions!Here's one for you. For all the legalese about whether 4 years means minimum 4 years, sometime in 2010, etc. I've seen people writing that Elizabeth was guaranteed a minimum 4 years, etc. What a load of tripe.Here's a very simple truth for you. When the language is unclear, then a judge, lawyer, or any reasonable person takes a step back, and construes the intent behind the parties agreement. In a court, that becomes the Judge's job, and then the bad language is interpreted according to what works given the intent of the parties. I argue that the intent of the membership was clear, and based on the 4 year election law that Harper broke so readily. The 4 year term was intended to match 4 yearly federal elections. The Leader should face an actual mandated contest after every election. For all the silly word manipulation, this was the actual intent, as anybody active at the time will tell you. If you want to manipulate the intent, and substance of the constitution, then you are doing exactly what the membership was trying to obviate. People thought hard about this, and it was based upon bitter experience, and that's god's own truth. The reasons are obvious upon reflection. The GPC has never had strong (meaning explicit) mechanisms in place. The membership didn't want a captive council, or opaque and manipulative backroom processes to determine who would be leader. Every process that council ever touched was polluted by manipulative persons and factions, and the members wanted a simple, clear opportunity to get rid of anybody who seized control of the agenda. Or not if they concurred. Simple mechanism and obviously sauce for the goose and gander alike. Their concerns are now fully ratified, because even with explicit direction like this, manipulative people are perverting the process for their own parochial purposes. I'm tired of the fig leafs about language, and practical concerns. They all just boil down to scrapping the mandated process in favour of backroom bullshit. In case none of you have noticed, what goes around comes around, and we are storing up trouble for the next round of manipulative internal bickering. It is all so clear and obvious, yet you all lend credence to these wankers trying to end run the constitution by supporting this perverse COUNCIL motion or the other. There is a time and a place to revise the badly worded rules, and the time is at a BGM, and the place most definitely is NOT federal council.

Just a few quick comments: 

I strongly recommend going down the road whereby a leadership review would be put off should our current leader be elected to the House. There could remain many strong reasons in the mind of the membership to want to review the leadership of the Party. It would be in the greater interest of the Party to provide an opportunity to review leadership after every election (including should our leader become Prime Minister, although I’m less concerned about the mechanics or the optics of that kind of review). If we’re going to remove the fixed dates for a leadership contest, we need to have a decent trigger in place. That trigger is the 6 month after an election "To Review or Not to Review" vote. 
 
Next point, which is an interesting one. For the first time, I’ve heard the following issue come up: Elections Canada legislation may make it impossible for our Party leader to continue in her role as leader while a leadership contest is underway, due in part to fair financing practices for all contestants. I’ll admit I’ve not studied the Elections Canada legislation (and I really don’t want to nor do I have the time to, so perhaps someone else can look into this). 
 
Interestingly, our Party’s Constitution does not require our Leader to step down from that position during a Leadership Contest, however if Elections Canada does have that kind of requirement, here’s a couple of interesting scenarios. First, by-law 2.1.4.2 indicates that the Party shall serve a four year term. If there is a requirement in Elections Canada legislation that the leader cease being the leader during a leadership contest (despite what our Constitution and by-laws say), if a leadership contest commences before August, de facto our current leader would not have served a "four year term" running from August 2006 through to August 2010, given that she would be forced to step down by Federal Council’s action of calling a leadership contest.
 
I’m not sure that I agree with the definition of "4 years" in the above scenario, however, although it is interesting to transpose the use of "4 years" here in by-law 2.1.4.2, which is the same language as used in 2.1.4.5, which refers to a leadership contest being held "every 4 years" starting in 2006. One would presume that if you accept "4 years" to mean "48 months" or "1460 days + a leap year day" than you have the following situation created by our Constitution: our Leader sits as Leader for 1460 days and the next day a leadership contest has to occur. That’s absurd, and that’s why I don’t buy that "4 years" in our Constitution means "48 months" or "1460 days". I believe and maintain that there is flexibility within the Constitution for both our Leader to cease being leader sometime within the 4th year of a leader’s mandate, and that a contest be held sometime within the calendar year 2010.
 
Having said that, though, I’m not a lawyer, and I keep hearing that there are these "legal opinions" floating around out there somewhere about the 4 year leadership term requirement. I heard about them again at last night’s Federal Council meeting, as did others on the line. It’s quite possible that there’s something to this, but I don’t have that information.
 
If there is something to this, though, than Dan’s motion to immediately begin a leadership contest which culminates with a vote at the August BGM may be unconstitutional. I would think that Federal Council might want to have a verified legal opinion on this before voting to move ahead with a leadership contest.