James Travers asks the question with no answer: "If Paul Martin is so serious about reducing the democratic deficit, why is he planning an early election?" Travers, not known as a Martin critic � see his column on the Throne Speech ("Shrewd speech hits the right political buttons") � says the public would find it impossible to make an informed judgment of the Chretien government, let alone Martin's, if the election were held, as planned, in May:

No one is saying who masterminded the Quebec advertising scam, or what happened to buckets of taxpayer money. No one is explaining why Chrétien suddenly decided to spend $100 million on two executive jets Liberal-friendly Bombardier was anxious to peddle. No one is willing to reveal the role played by the RCMP in shopping a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, to U.S. authorities who then shipped him to Syria for interrogation. And no one is certain where this government stands on the politically explosive issue of same-sex marriage. More to the point, no one will know much more about any of those issues until after an election. Two public inquiries and a rewritten reference to the Supreme Court have seen to that.

And yet, notwithstanding a few shivers of concern from the backbench, that's what Martin's people seem to be up to:

OTTAWA - The government has started to steamroll its way to an election as early as May 10, ordering the Senate into extra sittings to ram through priority legislation but rejecting an opposition request for more time in the Commons to deal with national issues and a string of scandals.