Everything You Didn't Really Want to Know About Canadian Politics, And Also Never Bothered to Ask
So, as many of you are probably unaware, tomorrow is election day in Canada. I don't particularly blame you. When I was busy prior to my rapidly disappearing vacation, I kept forgetting there was an election going on, so I've been trying to catch up by reading articles on CBC. This has quickly grown repetitive, since all of the leaders seem to have already exhausted their unique comments.
Yesterday, I summarized what I had learned to Vyc and she was amused, so she encouraged me to post it on my journal. However, realizing that a majority of my friends list is unlikely to know any of the people involved, I decided to give a brief lesson on Canadian politics, as seen by someone who doesn't know a lot about politics, economics, or pretty much anything besides certain social issues. This has taken me several hours over a couple of days.
I cannot stress it enough: My grasp of politics, economics, and most important parts of this campaign is very poor. My views are also skewed to the socially left-wing by a lot, so I'm likely to view the left in a protagonistic manner, the right in a fairly "meh" manner, and Stephen Harper in an entirely antagonistic manner -- fans of his would be well-advised to stay clear. Everything said here, based on a week of reading the online news and a lifetime of watching political satires, should be taken skeptically.
Major Canadian Political Parties
SO. For those of you who never pay attention to Canadian politics, Canada has a lot of federal political parties, but generally people only talk about five.
The Liberals are historically probably Canada's most popular party and certainly the oldest, in existence since the first election and having been the ruling party for 23 of the past 40 parliaments with about 70% of those majority governments. (Majority government: when a party is elected to more seats in the House of Commons than the rest of the parties put together. This puts them at an almost uncontestable advantage when it comes to voting on bills and such.) In fact, Wikipedia claims that they have been in power more years in the 20th century than any other party in a developed country -- 69 years spread through the century. Ironically, despite the name, they are now generally considered to be near to the centre of the Canadian political spectrum. It should be noted, though, that I recall reading somewhere that the centre of the Canadian political spectrum is quite a bit to the left of the United State's.
Despite the high popularity for the decade under Jean Chrétien in the 90s and early 21st century, his successor, Paul Martin, ran into trouble when a scandal known as the sponsorship scandal from Chrétien's era was uncovered, leading to a minority government in 2004 and their eventual defeat in 2006. (Note: while elections only have to be called after 5 years, they can be called more often and can be forced by the opposition either voting the current government down in a vote of non-confidence or voting down their annual budget if the current government holds fewer seats than the combined seats of the opposition parties -- a minority government.) Due to a tendency for leaders to resign when their parties do badly and the Liberals' plummeting performance in federal campaigns, the Liberals have had 3 leaders in the past 8 years since Chrétien -- Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion (a rather adorable man whose inexperience in leadership and speaking clear English combined with his unpopular carbon tax led the Liberals to an even worse position in 2008's election), and Micheal Ignatieff (an academic who spent a long time out of the country pursuing his education at Oxford and Harvard and teaching at a number of universities; likely notably less evil than the video suggests, but he's got a great face for it). Ignatieff is the current leader, elected in 2009 after the last election in 2008. I don't know too much about him, as he is quite new.
The Conservatives are a fairly recent party, formed by merging the biggest right-wing parties by Stephen Harper. The Conservative party would probably not raise many eyebrows if it ran in the United States elections (other than the fact that, you know, Canadians and Americans have fairly different political systems and thus it doesn't translate that well), but, in Canada, they are remarkably right-winged, since, as noted above, American politics are aligned quite a bit further to the right than Canadian politics. Harper is the current prime minister, which is not really like a president but it's probably the closest comparison to the American system, and has held a minority in the last two elections. Amongst a lot of Canadians, myself included, he is massively unpopular, but it must be said that he is strategically very clever. He has an extremely tight grip on his party and is very good at keeping information away from the public when he wants. Disconcertingly, he's also recently replaced the term "the Government of Canada" on documents with the term "the Harper Government." (A less funny, but more complete, treatment of the story.) However, his clever partisan maneuvering, the division of the left vote, and the general right-wing bent in the western Prairie provinces have allowed him to build an increasingly strong minority government despite a large number of people who rather hate him (there are certain people who are trying to vote for Anything But Harper).
The New Democratic Party are generally considered the "third party" of Canada, as they have trailed the other big two for a long time. Unlike the much older Liberals, the NDP are actually a left party and were originally led by the man responsible for Canadian health care, who was voted "The Greatest Canadian" in a televised contest for this. Since 2002, the party has been led by Jack Layton, a charismatic voice for change who is often considered the most popular leader of the federal parties (does this sound familiar?). He has led the NDP to its second-highest number of seats ever in the previous 2008 election, just 6 shy of its 1988 grand total. But before you get too excited, this second-highest number of seats is 37 of 308 -- about 12% of the House of Commons.
I will admit that I am quite taken with Layton's (source) charisma, especially since the NDP's views are closer to my own than any of the other parties. For example, they are the only party to mention LGBT equality as a goal in their platform and are the only one to include more on women's equality than just pay equality (otherwise only mentioned by the Liberals, and not mentioned at all by Harper's Conservatives, probably because he quietly cuts funding to women's groups pretty often), despite having a platform document only half the length of the Conservatives' and a third of the length of the Liberals'. On the other hand, they're pretty inexperienced since, while they are able to make an impact from their ability to balance the vote in a minority government, the idea of the NDP forming the government has been long considered pretty much a joke.
The fourth party is the Green party. As the name suggests, they are based mainly on environmental issues. Under its current leader, Elizabeth May, it has generally been considered a party of the left and has been gaining greater attention and support. However, despite rising to 6.8% of the vote last election, they have yet to get a Member of Parliament elected, including their leader. A quick look at Wikipedia claims that one independent Member of Parliament of the second-last session joined the Green party, but an election was called before he could officially sit in Parliament and was defeated. But they're hoping to get one in eventually!! It's often considered a way to throw away your vote in pretty much every riding, even the leader's, rather than being a way to throw away your vote in most ridings, like the NDP, but it has been slowly gaining support -- in the year that American voter turnout was a record high, 2008 Canadian voter turnout was a record low at 59.1%, so only the Green party increased the total number of voters. And May has been able to occasionally get included amongst the other parties -- the only such party with no seats in government to get that kind of attention.
The fifth party, which is actually ahead of the NDP in terms of seats, will seem a bit strange to people who don't pay attention to Canadian politics at all, but has been around for nearly 20 years and thus probably seems pretty normal to Canadians by now. This is the Bloc Québécois, led by Gilles Duceppe. They only run in the province of Québec and speak for Québec's interests in the House of Commons. It mightn't seem quite so odd until you realize that one of Québec's interests, according to them, is for the province to secede from Canada and form an independent nation. Yes, Canada has a federally funded party dedicated to making people stop following the federal government. Yes, it is kind of weird. Québec is not the only province to propose independence (though the list of active separatist movements on Wikipedia is longer for the United States, to my surprise), but it is by far the most enduring. The question of separation has been shot down in two referendums on the matter, making it clear that the movement is unlikely to ever bear fruit.
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I was reading about the wrong separatist movement. The 1995 referendum revealed that 49.42% of Quebec voters were in favour of separating from Canada, with 94% of the voting population participating. The previous referendum had only 40.44% in favour. Also, as I already mentioned, the Bloc Québécois, a seperatist party, spent the last five Parliament sessions with the third most seats in Parliament despite only running in one province (last time holding 49 of Québec's 75 seats) and, in its first year running six sessions ago, it was the Official Opposition of Canada. This is kind of a big issue.
There are a lot of other parties (Canadians actually have an officially recognized Pirate Party of Canada), but they are generally small, local affairs that don't get elected.
The Canadian Political System
This is where an informed writer would describe the Canadian parliamentary democracy within a constitutional monarchy and compare it to the American constitutional republic, since a lot of people on my friends' list are American, but I barely understand the Canadian system, let alone the American system. But, under the same "I don't really understand it but I'm going to try to explain it anyway" policy that caused this mess of a post, here are a few things to keep in mind because they're interesting.
* While I did make the pretty loose comparison of prime minister to president, the Prime Minister is not the head of state. As you might have gathered from that "constitutional monarchy" bit, the head of state of Canada is the Queen of England. Yes, I am completely serious. The Dominion of Canada is a monarchy under the British head of state. Long live Queen Elizabeth II! We have an unelected official presiding over things called the Governor General whose job is to be the Queen's representative in Canada. But don't worry. Most Canadians forget this, anyway, and think first of the Prime Minister, who is the head of government. The Governor General's role is often just to keep things organized and often follows the advice of the Prime Minister, and both the Governor General and the Queen are pretty much ceremonial. It's just leftover from the fact that Canadians were a lot more polite about our independence than Americans were.
* The Prime Minister of Canada is also not voted in the way the President of the United States is. Which is too bad in some ways -- Jack Layton, my own favourite, would probably be in charge by now in that case. In Canada, candidates are elected to Parliament in various ridings, and whichever party has the most seats forms the government. The leader of this party becomes the Prime Minister, who gets to choose the officials of the government (the cabinet) from his/her party (only one her so far who didn't survive an election after replacing the previous leader, sadly). At least, usually, but we'll get into that later. They serve until either A) they call an election (I believe it has to happen at least every 5 years), B) they lose the confidence of the house (which is to say a majority of MPs -- Members of Parliament -- vote that they no longer believe the Prime Minister is fit to rule), C) a majority of MPs vote against the annual budget and the ruling party refuses to change it, or D) their party replaces them with someone else. The first three cause an election (again, usually).
* I have no idea how American parties are funded. In Canada, they are funded partially by private donations, but much of the funding comes from the government so that they aren't reliant on the donations and thus not too reliant on the whims of large donators. This gives a certain amount of money per vote to each party. This is not quite as important for the Conservative party, who could probably get by on corporate donations since their policies favour corporations. The other parties? It'd be pretty hard, if not impossible. (At least, so claims Rick Mercer, an established political satirist.)
* Now, this point is important for the current election. To the point where I almost made a new section on highlights of the Conservative minorities to give it a framework, but I decided no one wanted to read that much about Canadian politics (does anyone want to read this much about Canadian politics?). There's this funny little thing about parliamentary democracy the way Canada has it set up. The reason I had to say "usually" when it comes to who forms the government is because of something often called a coalition government. It's really rare -- I believe it's only happened once in Canadian history -- but it's a legitimate move. It's something like this: normally, the party with the most seats forms the government. But if a party with fewer seats can gain the support of a majority of the House of Commons, they can form the government instead. Majority rules. It's only happened once, to my knowledge, and it didn't last long. In 1925, the Liberals agreed to terms with the Progressive Party of the time in order to be allowed to form the government 15 seats behind the party with the actual most seats. But it also nearly happened more recently than that. In December of 2008, in fact.
Remember the previous point about government funding? Harper attempted to cut those off as a way to save a little money for the economic crisis, and also by the way more-or-less bankrupt the opposition parties. This came on the tail of a crushingly bad election for the Liberals, who were by now blaming Dion, their leader, for the failure. Chances are that, if an election was called by the opposition parties (which would be a very unpopular move since Canadians have had elections in 2004, 2006, and 2008 and thus election fatigue caused the lowest voter turnout ever in Canada in the same year as the largest voter turnout in America in 40 years), Harper would probably have managed to get a majority. It seemed like the perfect time, other than the fact that it was a fairly partisan move during a time of economic crisis. Except, well, while Dion was a bad leader, he's not stupid. So this happened. Harper backed down, but Dion continued in the attempt to form a coalition government. Since this involved combining a centre party with a far left party with the support of a separatist party, this was an unpopular move with some. It grew even more unpopular when Harper prorogued Parliament and sent out messages calling this an illegal coup d'état (it's not, by the way). Sorry to say, "proroguing" is not how Harper makes money playing World of Warcraft. It is instead, more or less, closing down Parliament to stop anyone from voting on things like, say, taking down his party. In the intervening time, the coalition government became so unpopular that the Liberals removed Dion from the leadership over Christmas and tried to never bring it up again. So ended the only recent attempt to form a coalition government (a little more information on the events prior to the proroguing of parliament, as well as the "unpopular" bit, this is a funny description but it is also long).
Unless you talk to Layton and Duceppe. According to them, there is one other: when the last Liberal government was about to be voted down in 2006, Stephen Harper reportedly entered talks with the NDP and the Bloc -- the same parties Dion would talk to two years later -- to form a coalition government. You know, that thing he calls unconstitutional. Harper denies it, but he's one versus two in a "he said she said" situation.
THE ACTUAL JOKE
Except not quite yet. A small background of the events of this campaign comes first. I only started watching this election with any regularity less than two weeks ago. Before, it sounds like it was the standard. The Liberals and Conservatives were whaling on each other while the NDP and Green parties yip like they are actually important (well, the NDP are sorta important in that they get several ridings and often have enough seats to be able to swing votes between the main two parties). But then, not long before I started, something funny happened in the polls. Mostly in the "strange" way.
Polls are not accurate. Everyone who really understands them knows this -- even the reporters who use them to tell the story -- but much of the population act like they are. And something weird has been happening with them that have people paying attention. They call it the Orange Surge. Somewhere in the middle of the election, more and more people have claimed that they intend to vote NDP -- you know, that party with a near-record high of only 12% of the seats. Not a small increase. If the polls are accurate (which they are not, but if they are close enough), the NDP have passed the Liberals -- those people who spent 69 years of the 20th century in charge and are Canada's oldest political party -- and are getting rather close to the Conservatives. Seat projections -- also inaccurate -- suggest that the NDP could jump from 37 seats (about 12%) to over 100 (about a third of the seats). That is, predictions are for the NDP to form the official opposition in a (still) minority Conservative government, mainly by taking seats in Québec from the Bloc Québécois.
Now, these predictions are not reliable (one site noted that they are just for fun, because of the inaccuracy), but it's changed the tone of the campaign as Layton is now getting taken more seriously. But that change hasn't really lasted, as it didn't take too long to realize that each leader had found about three lines about current affairs and are just saying them to different backdrops. They can be summarized as follows:
Harper: Everyone hates instability and constant elections, right? Then gimme a majority so it doesn't keep happening when I deliberately piss off the opposition. It'll be way better when I piss off the opposition and they can't do anything about it, trust me. Also OOOH COALITION GOVERNMENTS SPOOKY OOOOOH. (Did I ask for a majority yet?)
Ignatieff: IT'S NOT FAIR NO ONE GIVES LAYTON AS HARD OF A TIME AS ME YOU JUST LIKE HIM BECAUSE HE'S GOT A NICE SMILE WE HATED HARPER BEFORE IT WAS COOL TO HATE HARPER COME ON GUUYYYYYYYYS I mean no we don't pay attention to polls it'll be totally different on election day.
Layton: CHANGE CHANGE it worked for obama right CHANGE. Also we hate Harper more, neener. And our budget is totally balanced shut up.
May: Could you maybe remember I exist occasionally, reporters? Thanks.
Duceppe: What the hell, Layton, give me my ridings back.
This doesn't quite cover everything. There's also quite a bit about coalition governments, with possibly a certain amount of justification. After all, last time came about because, shortly after being elected to a minority government, Harper introduced an economic update that the opposition found unacceptable. This election was called due to the government being found in contempt of Parliament just before Harper was able to introduce a budget that the opposition finds unacceptable -- which Harper has promised to not change if he gets reelected, majority or not. Hmmm.
This leads to interviews like so:
Liberals/NDP
Reporter: If you become the opposition again, would you form a coalition government against Harper?
Ignatieff/Layton: I'd rather pretend that I'm going to win the election.
R: Yes, but would you?
I/L: I'm not running to lose, you know.
R: Yes, but would you?
I/L: I have no plans to, but really I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
R: Okay, but would you?
I/L: I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
R: But would you?
I/L: ...Do you have any other questions?
R: Yes, but they're not as fun. Would you?
Conservatives
Reporter: If --
Harper: IGNATIEFF IS GOING TO FORM oh wait, who's in second again?
R: ...The NDP?
H: Right. Thanks. LAYTON IS GOING TO FORM A COALITION GOVERNMENT IF I DON'T GET A MAJORITY
R: Okay, but --
H: AND AN NDP COALITION CAUSE INSTABILITY AND THEY'LL RAISE TAXES OOOOOOOOH SCARY
R: Yes, but --
H: SO YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GIVE ME A MAJORITY OR ELSE LAYTON WILL FORM A COALITION
R: Can I spe --
H: MAJORITY MAJORITY MAJOR oh, what?
R: Um. Would you accept a coalition government if you got a minority and they did try to form one?
H: Well, I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
Of course, I've only watched one full interview, but nearly every article about any of those three parties includes either the previous opposition parties denying claims of coalition when asked or Harper claiming the chance of a coalition when not asked. And then recently Harper twice dodged a question about what he would do if a coalition government tried to form, besides wet his pants.
This has been Canadian Politics: From The Point Of View Of The Ignorant.
I wonder if the long build-up falls under Don't Explain the Joke?
Yesterday, I summarized what I had learned to Vyc and she was amused, so she encouraged me to post it on my journal. However, realizing that a majority of my friends list is unlikely to know any of the people involved, I decided to give a brief lesson on Canadian politics, as seen by someone who doesn't know a lot about politics, economics, or pretty much anything besides certain social issues. This has taken me several hours over a couple of days.
I cannot stress it enough: My grasp of politics, economics, and most important parts of this campaign is very poor. My views are also skewed to the socially left-wing by a lot, so I'm likely to view the left in a protagonistic manner, the right in a fairly "meh" manner, and Stephen Harper in an entirely antagonistic manner -- fans of his would be well-advised to stay clear. Everything said here, based on a week of reading the online news and a lifetime of watching political satires, should be taken skeptically.
Major Canadian Political Parties
SO. For those of you who never pay attention to Canadian politics, Canada has a lot of federal political parties, but generally people only talk about five.
The Liberals are historically probably Canada's most popular party and certainly the oldest, in existence since the first election and having been the ruling party for 23 of the past 40 parliaments with about 70% of those majority governments. (Majority government: when a party is elected to more seats in the House of Commons than the rest of the parties put together. This puts them at an almost uncontestable advantage when it comes to voting on bills and such.) In fact, Wikipedia claims that they have been in power more years in the 20th century than any other party in a developed country -- 69 years spread through the century. Ironically, despite the name, they are now generally considered to be near to the centre of the Canadian political spectrum. It should be noted, though, that I recall reading somewhere that the centre of the Canadian political spectrum is quite a bit to the left of the United State's.
Despite the high popularity for the decade under Jean Chrétien in the 90s and early 21st century, his successor, Paul Martin, ran into trouble when a scandal known as the sponsorship scandal from Chrétien's era was uncovered, leading to a minority government in 2004 and their eventual defeat in 2006. (Note: while elections only have to be called after 5 years, they can be called more often and can be forced by the opposition either voting the current government down in a vote of non-confidence or voting down their annual budget if the current government holds fewer seats than the combined seats of the opposition parties -- a minority government.) Due to a tendency for leaders to resign when their parties do badly and the Liberals' plummeting performance in federal campaigns, the Liberals have had 3 leaders in the past 8 years since Chrétien -- Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion (a rather adorable man whose inexperience in leadership and speaking clear English combined with his unpopular carbon tax led the Liberals to an even worse position in 2008's election), and Micheal Ignatieff (an academic who spent a long time out of the country pursuing his education at Oxford and Harvard and teaching at a number of universities; likely notably less evil than the video suggests, but he's got a great face for it). Ignatieff is the current leader, elected in 2009 after the last election in 2008. I don't know too much about him, as he is quite new.
The Conservatives are a fairly recent party, formed by merging the biggest right-wing parties by Stephen Harper. The Conservative party would probably not raise many eyebrows if it ran in the United States elections (other than the fact that, you know, Canadians and Americans have fairly different political systems and thus it doesn't translate that well), but, in Canada, they are remarkably right-winged, since, as noted above, American politics are aligned quite a bit further to the right than Canadian politics. Harper is the current prime minister, which is not really like a president but it's probably the closest comparison to the American system, and has held a minority in the last two elections. Amongst a lot of Canadians, myself included, he is massively unpopular, but it must be said that he is strategically very clever. He has an extremely tight grip on his party and is very good at keeping information away from the public when he wants. Disconcertingly, he's also recently replaced the term "the Government of Canada" on documents with the term "the Harper Government." (A less funny, but more complete, treatment of the story.) However, his clever partisan maneuvering, the division of the left vote, and the general right-wing bent in the western Prairie provinces have allowed him to build an increasingly strong minority government despite a large number of people who rather hate him (there are certain people who are trying to vote for Anything But Harper).
The New Democratic Party are generally considered the "third party" of Canada, as they have trailed the other big two for a long time. Unlike the much older Liberals, the NDP are actually a left party and were originally led by the man responsible for Canadian health care, who was voted "The Greatest Canadian" in a televised contest for this. Since 2002, the party has been led by Jack Layton, a charismatic voice for change who is often considered the most popular leader of the federal parties (does this sound familiar?). He has led the NDP to its second-highest number of seats ever in the previous 2008 election, just 6 shy of its 1988 grand total. But before you get too excited, this second-highest number of seats is 37 of 308 -- about 12% of the House of Commons.
I will admit that I am quite taken with Layton's (source) charisma, especially since the NDP's views are closer to my own than any of the other parties. For example, they are the only party to mention LGBT equality as a goal in their platform and are the only one to include more on women's equality than just pay equality (otherwise only mentioned by the Liberals, and not mentioned at all by Harper's Conservatives, probably because he quietly cuts funding to women's groups pretty often), despite having a platform document only half the length of the Conservatives' and a third of the length of the Liberals'. On the other hand, they're pretty inexperienced since, while they are able to make an impact from their ability to balance the vote in a minority government, the idea of the NDP forming the government has been long considered pretty much a joke.
The fourth party is the Green party. As the name suggests, they are based mainly on environmental issues. Under its current leader, Elizabeth May, it has generally been considered a party of the left and has been gaining greater attention and support. However, despite rising to 6.8% of the vote last election, they have yet to get a Member of Parliament elected, including their leader. A quick look at Wikipedia claims that one independent Member of Parliament of the second-last session joined the Green party, but an election was called before he could officially sit in Parliament and was defeated. But they're hoping to get one in eventually!! It's often considered a way to throw away your vote in pretty much every riding, even the leader's, rather than being a way to throw away your vote in most ridings, like the NDP, but it has been slowly gaining support -- in the year that American voter turnout was a record high, 2008 Canadian voter turnout was a record low at 59.1%, so only the Green party increased the total number of voters. And May has been able to occasionally get included amongst the other parties -- the only such party with no seats in government to get that kind of attention.
The fifth party, which is actually ahead of the NDP in terms of seats, will seem a bit strange to people who don't pay attention to Canadian politics at all, but has been around for nearly 20 years and thus probably seems pretty normal to Canadians by now. This is the Bloc Québécois, led by Gilles Duceppe. They only run in the province of Québec and speak for Québec's interests in the House of Commons. It mightn't seem quite so odd until you realize that one of Québec's interests, according to them, is for the province to secede from Canada and form an independent nation. Yes, Canada has a federally funded party dedicated to making people stop following the federal government. Yes, it is kind of weird. Québec is not the only province to propose independence (though the list of active separatist movements on Wikipedia is longer for the United States, to my surprise), but it is by far the most enduring. The question of separation has been shot down in two referendums on the matter, making it clear that the movement is unlikely to ever bear fruit.
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I was reading about the wrong separatist movement. The 1995 referendum revealed that 49.42% of Quebec voters were in favour of separating from Canada, with 94% of the voting population participating. The previous referendum had only 40.44% in favour. Also, as I already mentioned, the Bloc Québécois, a seperatist party, spent the last five Parliament sessions with the third most seats in Parliament despite only running in one province (last time holding 49 of Québec's 75 seats) and, in its first year running six sessions ago, it was the Official Opposition of Canada. This is kind of a big issue.
There are a lot of other parties (Canadians actually have an officially recognized Pirate Party of Canada), but they are generally small, local affairs that don't get elected.
The Canadian Political System
This is where an informed writer would describe the Canadian parliamentary democracy within a constitutional monarchy and compare it to the American constitutional republic, since a lot of people on my friends' list are American, but I barely understand the Canadian system, let alone the American system. But, under the same "I don't really understand it but I'm going to try to explain it anyway" policy that caused this mess of a post, here are a few things to keep in mind because they're interesting.
* While I did make the pretty loose comparison of prime minister to president, the Prime Minister is not the head of state. As you might have gathered from that "constitutional monarchy" bit, the head of state of Canada is the Queen of England. Yes, I am completely serious. The Dominion of Canada is a monarchy under the British head of state. Long live Queen Elizabeth II! We have an unelected official presiding over things called the Governor General whose job is to be the Queen's representative in Canada. But don't worry. Most Canadians forget this, anyway, and think first of the Prime Minister, who is the head of government. The Governor General's role is often just to keep things organized and often follows the advice of the Prime Minister, and both the Governor General and the Queen are pretty much ceremonial. It's just leftover from the fact that Canadians were a lot more polite about our independence than Americans were.
* The Prime Minister of Canada is also not voted in the way the President of the United States is. Which is too bad in some ways -- Jack Layton, my own favourite, would probably be in charge by now in that case. In Canada, candidates are elected to Parliament in various ridings, and whichever party has the most seats forms the government. The leader of this party becomes the Prime Minister, who gets to choose the officials of the government (the cabinet) from his/her party (only one her so far who didn't survive an election after replacing the previous leader, sadly). At least, usually, but we'll get into that later. They serve until either A) they call an election (I believe it has to happen at least every 5 years), B) they lose the confidence of the house (which is to say a majority of MPs -- Members of Parliament -- vote that they no longer believe the Prime Minister is fit to rule), C) a majority of MPs vote against the annual budget and the ruling party refuses to change it, or D) their party replaces them with someone else. The first three cause an election (again, usually).
* I have no idea how American parties are funded. In Canada, they are funded partially by private donations, but much of the funding comes from the government so that they aren't reliant on the donations and thus not too reliant on the whims of large donators. This gives a certain amount of money per vote to each party. This is not quite as important for the Conservative party, who could probably get by on corporate donations since their policies favour corporations. The other parties? It'd be pretty hard, if not impossible. (At least, so claims Rick Mercer, an established political satirist.)
* Now, this point is important for the current election. To the point where I almost made a new section on highlights of the Conservative minorities to give it a framework, but I decided no one wanted to read that much about Canadian politics (does anyone want to read this much about Canadian politics?). There's this funny little thing about parliamentary democracy the way Canada has it set up. The reason I had to say "usually" when it comes to who forms the government is because of something often called a coalition government. It's really rare -- I believe it's only happened once in Canadian history -- but it's a legitimate move. It's something like this: normally, the party with the most seats forms the government. But if a party with fewer seats can gain the support of a majority of the House of Commons, they can form the government instead. Majority rules. It's only happened once, to my knowledge, and it didn't last long. In 1925, the Liberals agreed to terms with the Progressive Party of the time in order to be allowed to form the government 15 seats behind the party with the actual most seats. But it also nearly happened more recently than that. In December of 2008, in fact.
Remember the previous point about government funding? Harper attempted to cut those off as a way to save a little money for the economic crisis, and also by the way more-or-less bankrupt the opposition parties. This came on the tail of a crushingly bad election for the Liberals, who were by now blaming Dion, their leader, for the failure. Chances are that, if an election was called by the opposition parties (which would be a very unpopular move since Canadians have had elections in 2004, 2006, and 2008 and thus election fatigue caused the lowest voter turnout ever in Canada in the same year as the largest voter turnout in America in 40 years), Harper would probably have managed to get a majority. It seemed like the perfect time, other than the fact that it was a fairly partisan move during a time of economic crisis. Except, well, while Dion was a bad leader, he's not stupid. So this happened. Harper backed down, but Dion continued in the attempt to form a coalition government. Since this involved combining a centre party with a far left party with the support of a separatist party, this was an unpopular move with some. It grew even more unpopular when Harper prorogued Parliament and sent out messages calling this an illegal coup d'état (it's not, by the way). Sorry to say, "proroguing" is not how Harper makes money playing World of Warcraft. It is instead, more or less, closing down Parliament to stop anyone from voting on things like, say, taking down his party. In the intervening time, the coalition government became so unpopular that the Liberals removed Dion from the leadership over Christmas and tried to never bring it up again. So ended the only recent attempt to form a coalition government (a little more information on the events prior to the proroguing of parliament, as well as the "unpopular" bit, this is a funny description but it is also long).
Unless you talk to Layton and Duceppe. According to them, there is one other: when the last Liberal government was about to be voted down in 2006, Stephen Harper reportedly entered talks with the NDP and the Bloc -- the same parties Dion would talk to two years later -- to form a coalition government. You know, that thing he calls unconstitutional. Harper denies it, but he's one versus two in a "he said she said" situation.
THE ACTUAL JOKE
Except not quite yet. A small background of the events of this campaign comes first. I only started watching this election with any regularity less than two weeks ago. Before, it sounds like it was the standard. The Liberals and Conservatives were whaling on each other while the NDP and Green parties yip like they are actually important (well, the NDP are sorta important in that they get several ridings and often have enough seats to be able to swing votes between the main two parties). But then, not long before I started, something funny happened in the polls. Mostly in the "strange" way.
Polls are not accurate. Everyone who really understands them knows this -- even the reporters who use them to tell the story -- but much of the population act like they are. And something weird has been happening with them that have people paying attention. They call it the Orange Surge. Somewhere in the middle of the election, more and more people have claimed that they intend to vote NDP -- you know, that party with a near-record high of only 12% of the seats. Not a small increase. If the polls are accurate (which they are not, but if they are close enough), the NDP have passed the Liberals -- those people who spent 69 years of the 20th century in charge and are Canada's oldest political party -- and are getting rather close to the Conservatives. Seat projections -- also inaccurate -- suggest that the NDP could jump from 37 seats (about 12%) to over 100 (about a third of the seats). That is, predictions are for the NDP to form the official opposition in a (still) minority Conservative government, mainly by taking seats in Québec from the Bloc Québécois.
Now, these predictions are not reliable (one site noted that they are just for fun, because of the inaccuracy), but it's changed the tone of the campaign as Layton is now getting taken more seriously. But that change hasn't really lasted, as it didn't take too long to realize that each leader had found about three lines about current affairs and are just saying them to different backdrops. They can be summarized as follows:
Harper: Everyone hates instability and constant elections, right? Then gimme a majority so it doesn't keep happening when I deliberately piss off the opposition. It'll be way better when I piss off the opposition and they can't do anything about it, trust me. Also OOOH COALITION GOVERNMENTS SPOOKY OOOOOH. (Did I ask for a majority yet?)
Ignatieff: IT'S NOT FAIR NO ONE GIVES LAYTON AS HARD OF A TIME AS ME YOU JUST LIKE HIM BECAUSE HE'S GOT A NICE SMILE WE HATED HARPER BEFORE IT WAS COOL TO HATE HARPER COME ON GUUYYYYYYYYS I mean no we don't pay attention to polls it'll be totally different on election day.
Layton: CHANGE CHANGE it worked for obama right CHANGE. Also we hate Harper more, neener. And our budget is totally balanced shut up.
May: Could you maybe remember I exist occasionally, reporters? Thanks.
Duceppe: What the hell, Layton, give me my ridings back.
This doesn't quite cover everything. There's also quite a bit about coalition governments, with possibly a certain amount of justification. After all, last time came about because, shortly after being elected to a minority government, Harper introduced an economic update that the opposition found unacceptable. This election was called due to the government being found in contempt of Parliament just before Harper was able to introduce a budget that the opposition finds unacceptable -- which Harper has promised to not change if he gets reelected, majority or not. Hmmm.
This leads to interviews like so:
Liberals/NDP
Reporter: If you become the opposition again, would you form a coalition government against Harper?
Ignatieff/Layton: I'd rather pretend that I'm going to win the election.
R: Yes, but would you?
I/L: I'm not running to lose, you know.
R: Yes, but would you?
I/L: I have no plans to, but really I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
R: Okay, but would you?
I/L: I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
R: But would you?
I/L: ...Do you have any other questions?
R: Yes, but they're not as fun. Would you?
Conservatives
Reporter: If --
Harper: IGNATIEFF IS GOING TO FORM oh wait, who's in second again?
R: ...The NDP?
H: Right. Thanks. LAYTON IS GOING TO FORM A COALITION GOVERNMENT IF I DON'T GET A MAJORITY
R: Okay, but --
H: AND AN NDP COALITION CAUSE INSTABILITY AND THEY'LL RAISE TAXES OOOOOOOOH SCARY
R: Yes, but --
H: SO YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GIVE ME A MAJORITY OR ELSE LAYTON WILL FORM A COALITION
R: Can I spe --
H: MAJORITY MAJORITY MAJOR oh, what?
R: Um. Would you accept a coalition government if you got a minority and they did try to form one?
H: Well, I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
Of course, I've only watched one full interview, but nearly every article about any of those three parties includes either the previous opposition parties denying claims of coalition when asked or Harper claiming the chance of a coalition when not asked. And then recently Harper twice dodged a question about what he would do if a coalition government tried to form, besides wet his pants.
This has been Canadian Politics: From The Point Of View Of The Ignorant.
I wonder if the long build-up falls under Don't Explain the Joke?