Saturday, April 26 The Prime Minister will call an election this weekend, scarcely three-and-a- half years after the last. He does not have to. He chooses to, in the estimation that this is the moment he stands the best chance of winning. It is entirely up to him, because in Canada an election is not an occasion for the people to choose a government: it is the opportunity for an oligarchy to confirm itself in power -- a pit-stop on the road to autocracy.

It is the occasion, too, for the oligarchy's courtiers to bid for its favours -- with the public's money. Canadian electoral law limits campaign spending; it imposes no limits on campaign contributions. Contributors may, further, reclaim up to 75 per cent of the donation in the form of a federal tax credit, to a limit of $500. The parties then collect their own toll on the same money, having voted to reimburse themselves out of public funds for 22.5 per cent of campaign expenses (50 per cent for individual candidates).

Union and corporate interests are encouraged to contribute vast sums in the expectation of buying influence; the parties spend the money on expensive advertising campaigns aimed at "getting their message out," the substance of the message being that the influence has indeed been bought. Interest pays party, party repays interest, and the taxpayer picks up the tab at both ends.

The limits on spending enlarge the advantages of incumbency and name recognition: challengers cannot redress the imbalance by advertising. The combination of limited spending and open-ended contributions, moreover, enhances the relative importance of a select group of large contributors.

Since not every interest can be accommodated, some have taken to financing their own appeals to the electorate: unions upset at government job cuts, taxpayer groups pushing for less public spending. The parties' response to these attempts to evade their monopoly on public debate was, characteristically, to outlaw them: had an Alberta court not thrown out the ban on so-called "third-party" advertising, the cartel would still be in control.

The parties have succeeded in banning publication of opinion polls in the last three days of the campaign. Not the taking of opinion polls, mind, such as the ones to which the parties will be privy up to the last minute: only the sharing of this information with the voting public. For the parties have decreed that the electorate may not vote on whatever grounds they choose, but must base their decision on those criteria the parties themselves deem acceptable.

Not every political party may enter the charmed circle. The major parties have conspired to deny official party status -- and hence eligibility for public funds -- to any party that does not field at least fifty candidates, each of whom is required to put up a $1,000 deposit.

Nor may even registered parties compete on the same footing. A bizarre provision of the Canada Elections Act sets an overall ceiling on the amount of television advertising time the parties may collectively purchase: 390 minutes, in 1993. With limits comes rationing, and with rationing comes rules: the time is doled out to the established parties according to their standings in the previous election, a complex formula combining the number of seats won, the number of candidates running, and the popular vote obtained.

So, in 1993, the Tories received 116 minutes, to the Liberals' 78, the NDP's 55, Reform's 17 -- and the Bloc Quebecois's five. Thanks to another Alberta court ruling, parties may now purchase more than their allotted time, effectively neutering the provision. But the clubby mindset remains. In the absence of any legal provision for televised debates, for example, the matter has been left to negotiation between the major players. Result: debates are tailored to suit the party that likes them least -- the party that is leading in the polls -- and to the exclusion of smaller parties.

And of course, the biggest obstacle the less established parties face is the electoral system itself, the antiquated first-past-the-post rule for electing MPs. A party may have widespread support in the country, but if such support does not happen to crop up in large enough geographic clumps, it goes unrepresented in Parliament. On the other hand, a party that successfully exploits regional grievances may achieve a standing out of all proportion to its support -- with the result that only one party in the current election has any intention of actually governing the country.

There you have it: a system that favours the parties over the public, the large parties over the small, the governing party over the opposition. And at the apex stands the Prime Minister: who picks the candidates, who times the election, who afterward names the cabinet, and who governs all but unopposed until such time as he chooses to play out the charade again.

You want an election issue? The election is an election issue.