And nothing changed.
I've been in the heart of Canada visiting in-laws for Canadian Thanksgiving and have born witness to the truely unique process by which they chose their government.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper disovled the Canadian parliment in September thinking the time was ripe to hold an election and obtain a conservative majority. However after a few faux pas with the funding of the arts in Quebec (which was seen as a major snub to French Culture), and a cost of over $300 million Canadian, nothing much really changed. Conservatives gained a few seats but still in the minority.
Some reflections:
- I Had no idea the conservative party was so popular in Canada. Here I thought Canada was just a big soppy liberal utopia that we could only DREAM of becoming. But the conservative party got pretty close to a majority and I (based on my limited observations) determined that perhaps it has to do with the fact that most of the multiple parties appear to be "left" leaning where as there's really only one big "right" party.
- I had no idea that a party, who's founding platform is sessation from the "Canadian Confederation" could be such a popular party! The Bloc Quebecois party got about 50 seats in parliment (out of 300 sometime)! That's all JUST from one province.
- Oh My God it really is like another country out here! This week I was exposed to names I've never heard of, faces I've never seen, and all kinds of different personalities and interviews. A couple shows in particular called the Rick Mercer Report and This Hour has 22 Minutes are particularly funny comedy news shows that had live interviews with the candidates on completely ridiculous grounds.
- The Candians have had 3 federal elections in the span of 4 years (at about $300 million a pop). I mean what kind of government can you expect to have when the prime minister can just send EVERYONE home and call an election for political purposes?? It is the ONLY thing I found up here that made me glad we don't have that kind of thing here in the states. People were really not happy that they had to undergo this hassle and expense. And yet the conservative party DID gain a few seats at the end, so I guess they weren't quite THAT unhappy.
It's been really refreshing to get away from the obsession of US politics and briefly obsess about Canadian politics.
While we were watching the returns to come in we were watching this one segment called "Darts and Laurels" (a TV equivilant of "Cheer and Jeers") hilighting the ups and downs of the campaigns. And inserted in the middle was a laurel for Barak Obama with the quote "I mean really, who doesn't love this guy?" So I found that kind of funny.