I was talking this over with a friend last night. Andrew Coyne hits it with this:
“All in all, it would be hard to pick a worse time to call an election, as far as the Liberals are concerned: divided internally, stalled in the polls, in the midst of the biggest scandal in modern Canadian political history. All of which raises a troubling question: Why are they calling an election? How much worse are they expecting things to get? If, as bad as things are for them at the moment, they would still rather go now than wait until fall or even next year — if this is the best-case scenario — what on earth do they fear is waiting down the road?”