In fairness to Ms. Campbell, she never said that.  

What she actually said was "an election is no time to discuss serious issues".

What she actually meant was that a short election campaign was not long enough to properly tackle complex and serious issues.

I'm not a big Campbell fan but I thought she was being refreshingly honest in her actual remark.

And I suspect both Harper and Mulcair would agree that the Liberal election campaign fronted by Mr. Trudeau was the most dishonest - both in terms of misleading portrayals of the previous government's record and of obviously ridiculously fanciful and impossible promises - in modern Canadian history.

So I think we are well advised not to be too smug about what is happening now south of the border and what happened a few months ago across the pond.

What seems to be the case is things are now so complicated that most people make no attempt to study and analyse issues and policy options beyond the "what's in it for me?" level.