It’s official. Prime Minister Harper met with Governor General Michaëlle Jean today, and she dissolved Parliament, triggering an election. Canadians will vote on October 14.
The American election machine has been rumbling away for the better part of a year now, and we have called and will be finished our federal election before the Americans even get to vote. 
I love Canada’s electoral system.
What I don’t love is the lack of any charismatic leaders and the lack of any compelling candidates in my riding. The Conservatives have already begun airing these obnoxious ads that consist of Harper sitting in a chair, wearing a vest—very “casual” indeed—and talking about how he enjoys being a father, how he is proud of Canada as a country, and how he wants Canada to have a greater role on the world stage. The tagline of the commercials is: “We’re better off with Harper.” I, for one, find this tagline hilarious.
The CBC has spent most of the day focusing on voters’ response to the election call: are we ready for the election? The response has been mixed. Many people have expressed disapproval, since Harper was a proponent of the fixed election date law that the government passed in 2006. They see this premature election call as a betrayal of his promise for fixed election dates. They also see it as a waste of time, that not many seats will change hands, and the election will result in essentially the same government at great expense to taxpayers. Others, like myself, feel that the election is necessary.
My dad and I listened to CBC’s Cross Country Checkup today, and it seemed like most of the people who phoned in to talk about the election supported the Conservatives! Could it be true? Could we end up with a Conservative majority? Perish the thought. On the CBC website, comments lean more toward the anti-Harper side of things. From a demographic standpoint, this makes sense. To illustrate, I’ve prepared the below Venn diagram. I don’t actually have any statistics, and I’m too lazy to make them up (as most statistics are), so I‘ve decided to just insert some random animal names instead. You can make up numbers if you like.
My riding has three candidates running, one from each of the three major parties. I’ve yet to see if the Green party will be floating a candidate. The incumbent MP, Joe Comuzzi, who ran as a Liberal and is sitting as a Conservative now, is not running again. It’ll be interesting to see who wins my riding, and in turn, if Thunder Bay will benefit from this election, no matter what it holds for Canada in general.
» 6 people have an opinion
We have a multi-party election in theory, but in practice the two largest parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, dominate. The chance of the NDP forming a government is slim. However, the NDP (and now the Bloc Québécois) can sometimes garner enough votes to prevent one of the two parties from winning the majority they might otherwise get. In this election, that’s one of the dilemmas for those who do not want to support the Conservatives. The safe bet is to vote for the Liberals, because each vote puts us further from a Conservative government. However, some of those anti-Conservative voters may not want Stéphane Dion to be our next Prime Minister, or they may prefer the ideology of the NDP or the Green Party. So the question becomes, do they vote for one of those two parties at the risk of weakening the Liberals, and thus allowing the Conservatives to form another minority government?
Right, I’m voting for the guy who has said himself during previous elections “a vote for me will be like a vote for candidate x”, I‘m not sure what that means for this election, but I support him based on his own platform, which is fairly liberal. If I had to choose a candidate from one of the two large parties, I’d still be having a hard time choosing. I like and dislike both for similar reasons and can’t really make too much of a distinction between what they stand for. Of course, the candidate I plan on voting for is the only one I have really paid a lot of attention to.
I’ve never seen a soup can in the wild. Are they a common sight in your area?
Yes, we‘re collecting money for a wild soup can preservation area, actually. They’re very sneaky, so I‘m not surprised you’ve yet to see one.
Ben I think the purple dot represents the following:
You
Me
and that crazy guy, you know, oh whats his name….he lives up in the mountains…bout that tall…. has a pet soup can…..
Gary!
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The earliest I remember anything about the election was Hillary Clinton announcing her bid (“I‘m in it, and I’m in it to win it”) during my senior year of high school, so we‘ve been in election mode for over a year and a half.
It usually doesn’t matter who gets elected in America, both candidates end up being the same by the time elections roll around. I‘m supporting a third party candidate but he won’t get elected because of the two party system. Bleh
Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 10:22 PM