As some of you may be aware Canada has a fixed date election law. According to it elections must occur in September of every fourth year. However, this law does not prevent the Governor General from calling an election at any time. To prevent that would require a constitutional amendment limiting the Royal Prerogative. Since, by convention, the Governor General most always listens to the advice of his or her Prime Minister there is fair reason to believe the fixed election date law is toothless.

This is an ongoing issue related to the Prime Minister's right to advise the Governor General. Mainly that he can do so with little in the way to moderate his advice. By long-held convention the Prime Minister alone has exclusive right to advise the Governor General. There isn't anything wrong with the convention per se. Conventions exist, after all, as a kind of shorthand for what 'works best most often'. They are solid but have the flexibility of not being set in stone like laws are. In this regard they are meant to compliment the laws of the land. For this reason even if Canada wanted to open the constitution to limit the Royal Prerogative I'd be against it.

So what can be done?

The problems with the fixed election date law may have an easy fix: have Parliament make it a criminal act for the Prime Minister to render certain kinds of advice to the Governor General. Since a criminal act is pretty much the quickest way to lose your seat in Parliament it would be a strong disincentive for rendering said advice. However, if some unforeseen crisis came about it wouldn't completely prevent the Prime Minister from giving the needed advice. It also wouldn't prevent the government from falling of its own accord.

But would this be constitutional?

I'm of the opinion it would be. Courts can order publication bans and non-disclosure agreements are fairly common in Canada; both of which involve limiting the transmission of certain pieces of information. We also limit fundamental rights when it serves some essential purpose (for instance, some federal officials are not allowed to vote while in office). While having Parliament pass a law which places limits on how and when a Prime Minister might advise the Governor General (or, for that matter, the Queen) would seem to violate convention it must be remembered: conventions are not laws and are not interpreted by the courts. Conventions limit activities that a strict reading of the law would say are permissible and the courts are only there to interpret actual law. 

If Parliament wanted to there are several different issues this idea could be applied to (prorogation being one). If applied widely enough a Prime Minister could end up effectively neutered. The convention that the Prime Minister is the sole person allowed to advise the Governor General would be broken and a more diverse set of conventions would likely soon arise.

The Pirate Party leadership has been busy working to construct a platform for 2015 over the last year and a half. The creation of the platform is a three step process involving policy submissions by members and the general public, editing by the party leadership, and a party-wide vote to confirm a policy as part of the official platform. The following policies are the first batch that has been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on in the near future:

Fairness for Independents
-We propose allowing independent candidates to raise funds in the two months leading up to a scheduled general election provided the candidate submits the names of their official agent and their auditor to Elections Canada beforehand.  Should the independent candidate receive a party’s nomination, they must hand over all money raised during this period to Elections Canada.  All funds will be subject to the same reporting rules as those raised during the election itself.
-Additionally, we propose a new system by which money raised by independent candidates before the end of an election will instead be held in trust by Elections Canada until the next Federal election. If the person runs again as an independent candidate, the money that is held in trust will be returned to them for use in their campaign. If the person decides not to run at all or runs  as a candidate under a party banner, the money held in trust will be forfeited to Elections Canada in whole. All interest accrued from money held by Elections Canada in this manner will belong to Elections Canada. 
-Finally, we would reinstate the ability of independent MPs to introduce significant amendments at a bills report stage.  As independent MPs do not currently get a vote on committees, this would allow for a more fair playing field.

There has been general agreement to start with policies that have wide agreement in the party and work our way outwards from there. The Fairness for Independents & Unbundle Technology sections represent two such natural outgrowths from existing party beliefs. 

Many policies remain to be reviewed and it will take dedicated work to have the platform ready by the end of the year. Some policies had to be rejected but this is a normal part of policy development. Canadian Federalism presents a unique challenge in that some areas near and dear to the Pirate heart cannot be adequately addressed at the federal level. The entire process is a learning experience and I look forward to carrying the project to completion.

Q & A

Where are the privacy protection, patent reform, open government, etc policies?
None of the previous policies from 2011 were 'grandfathered in' to the 2015 platform. That is to say, everything is being re-examined. Since the policies mentioned are fairly fundamental to party identity they will end up in the final document in some form, we simply haven't gotten to them yet.

Why didn't you leave policy creation up to the membership? / why did you have the leadership assume a primary role?
Policy development is a tricky business and we wanted a dedicated group involved to make sure the process didn't flounder. There is also the issue involving popular policies that a federal party has little ability to create policy on. We have tried to keep the policy development process as open as possible by having an extended period where members could submit policies (still on-going) and by giving them the final say on whether a policy is adopted.

I saw X policy on the website I really liked but now it has disappeared. What happened? 
Most likely the policy was rejected by the leadership and hidden from view. The discussion page for all policies (rejected, accepted, and yet to be looked at) can be found on the Party Forum. A document listing rejected policies may be released at a later date but for now you can assume it was a policy that fell outside the federal mandate (since this has been the most common reason for rejecting a policy).