It's that time again.

If you haven't heard yet, we are in the middle of electing our beloved leaders. BS is flying fast and furious everywhere and promises to make our lives a veritable paradise abound.
Who are the protagonists in the epic clash, well for those of you who do not live in our beautiful land here is a rapid who's who.



Stephen Harper: leader of the Conservative party. Comes from the Reform/Alliance (radical right) party before they took over the conservatives after having united their fortunes. He is known to be autocratic and doesn't really feel that he needs Parliament except to rubber stamp his decisions from the PMO (prime minister's office, a kind of unelected executive). He is a kind of "Bush lite". His platform is mainly law and order (even if the statistics prove that crime has gone down), more military, tax cuts to the large corporations (which probably means that I will be paying more taxes to make up the difference), Republican style attack ads and scare mongering. Has ties to the oil industry and the religious right.




Michael Ignatieff: Liberal leader, liberals being analogous to the Democrats in the US, is an unknown quantity since this is his first election as leader. He is an academic and was at Harvard before becoming the Liberal leader after coup-d'état against the last leader who had even less charisma. His popularity is not the highest at the moment and his chances of forming a government are pretty slim. His platform is left of center and contains promises for families and the middle class. If he does not have a good showing or Harper gets elected with a majority, his days will probably be numbered.




Jack Layton: the leader of the New Democrats. This is a socialist party a bit like the Labour party used to be in the UK. Jack is probably the best liked of the leaders. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy. His party advocates for higher taxes for corporations and the rich, more social programs and more environmentally friendly actions. He is a nice guy but nice guys usually finish last.





Gilles Duceppe: leader of the Bloc Québécois is a big bad separatist, according to Harper he has horns and a forked tail. He is a charismatic and pragmatic leader and is probably the best statesman of the bunch. He is wildly popular in Québec and his party stands to win about 50% of the popular vote here. He usually wins most of the seats for the province. His platform is socialist with the added bonus of wanting to take the province out of the Canadian Federation. His party runs no candidates outside of Québec but that doesn't stop him garnering popularity outside the province.





Elizabeth May: leader of the Green party. This party garnered about 10% of the vote but has elected nobody to parliament. As the name says their platform is principally about the environment and socially they a also a socialist party (kind of goes together). Doesn't have a chance in hell of forming the government but that isn't stopping them from trying.
So there are the choices. If you haven't yet figured it out I'm not a great Harper/Conservative fan and I can only hope he doesn't win enough seats to get a majority because, with apologies to my American friends, I really don't want to live under an American style Republican Right government. There is also my feeling that Harper's style of social policy will play into the hands of the separatist Parti Québécois (provincial separatist party with ties to the Bloc) who will use the fact that Canada has values that we in Québec (we usually have more socialist values here) can't live with. They will then have a referendum and might just win it.
So on May 2nd it's off to the polls we go. I only wish sometimes that there was always a final choice on the ballot, "None of the above". I'm willing to bet that this option would get the most votes.

- Posted from my iPhone

The best of times and the worst of times

As a Canadian we are used to a rather ho hum, middle of the road, type of leadership and government. The Liberals are just a bit to the left of centre, the Conservatives are a bit to the right (They would be much farther to the right if our PM had his way.) The leadership is pretty much grey with no real extremes. We could even say that we are a rather dull bunch.

Our American cousins on the other hand, seem to love going from one extreme to the other. They have had presidents that have inspired generations and changed the world. Men such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, who had a glorious vision of what their country could be and inspired their citizens to reach out and grasp that vision. But they also had presidents that were the opposite, Nixon, Reagan, Bush. Men who would do anything to win power, who would bring out the lowest common denominator of pettiness and narrow mindedness.
The last president is a perfect example of this. He was an unmitigated disaster for both America and the world. Under his watch America went from a balanced budget with a surplus to a veritable ocean of red ink, the American and world economies were devastated because greed and stupidity were allowed to go unchecked, America has lost thousands of young men in a futile war, whose drive and creativity are lost forever, America has made enemies across the world by its highhanded ruthless disregard for basic human rights. Under his watch we have seen examples of torture, wrongful imprisonment, an almost complete disregard for all international conventions that the United States has signed such as the Geneva Convention. He has masterminded an erosion of the rights laid out in the American Constitution that he was supposed to uphold and has trampled the very rule of law on which all democracies are based. And George W Bush was elected twice, wasn't once enough?
And yet just when the world despairs of ever seeing an America that plays a leadership role instead of being the world bully, the American electorate does a "beau geste" and elects an African American to the White House. Not only a visible minority but a man with a vision who can inspire the American people to reach out and grasp a dream of a better world for everyone who shares our common humanity. America can once again become an inspiration instead something to be reviled. Congratulations for having elected President Obama. There is now more hope for the future.
As for we Canadians, we'll muddle along with our grey uninspiring Prime Ministers. We'll probably never have a Barak Obama, ... but then again hopefully we'll never be stuck with a George Bush.

Squabbling children???

Not even one week into the election campaign and already the politicians are squabbling like a bunch of unruly school children in a school yard. Name calling, fisticuffs, vandalism, it's all there for us to see. The ADQ is accusing the Liberals of pulling down their election signs to put up their own in their place. (Election signs are a blot upon the landscape anyway, who wants to see a blown up photo of a grinning politician repeated ad nauseum up and down our roads? We still haven't gotten rid of all of them from the last time.) In a political debate the Liberal Finance minister called her debating partners from the ADQ and PQ, "cons" and "polissons" and the leader of the PQ said that the leader of the Liberals was lying through his teeth. (Mind you there is some truth to the allegations I suppose, but you are not supposed to say it out loud.) In fact they are even fighting inside their own party. At the investiture of a PQ candidate, fisticuffs broke out when the supporters of of the incumbent didn't like the fact that the PQ executive had foisted another candidate on the riding. (The incumbent had pissed of the powers that be in the party, so out he goes, even if he had been there since 1996... doesn't pay to piss off Pauline Marois the head of the party.)
Is it any wonder that politicians are about as popular as a root canal. I've seen more maturity in my 13 year old students.

Two down, one to go.

Well if you have to be in election mode, you might as well go all the way. Our "premier ministre" has just declared a provincial election for December 8th. First we elected Stephen Harper as the Canadian PM (thankfully in a minority government, keeping him on a short leash), then we have been immersed in the presidential election of our southern cousins (who showed the good sense to elect Obama after having elected Bush two times) and now back we go to a provincial election, less than two years after the last one. Mind you, I can understand why our PM, Charest, is doing it. He has a minority government, he is way up in the polls, the other parties are in disarray (especially the right wing ADQ) and shit is about to hit the fan with the economy since there is a recession to the south. (Caused by greed and stupidity that was not checked by the powers that be.) So here's to election fever, I'm so sick of the BS and the promises that I know will never be fulfilled, that I think I'll take two asperin and hide my head under the blankets...

Election Time

Well it seems that we are in for an election. Stephen Harper our prime minister has decided that enough is enough and since the polls are looking good for him, today he went to see the Governor General and asked that parliament be dissolved. He has done this despite the fact that he passed a law saying that elections would be at fixed intervals, every four years. (He only served 2.5 years.) His excuse, parliament was "dysfunctional" despite the fact that he has passed just about every piece of legislation he has brought forth even if his party was in minority. The Liberals, who have the balance of power, have been "no-show" for pretty much the last two years. Their leader, Stéphan Dion, has all the charisma and leadership skills of a dead squirrel. So let's go for a majority.

What has our beloved PM done in the last two years? Well he threw out Kyoto and came out with his homemade plan that gives the oil producers carte-blanche. Instead of banning guns (especially high powered assault weapons) or making it harder to acquire them, he scrapped the gun registry (which wasn't very efficient to start with) and left it all in limbo. Mr. Harper should maybe go give a little speech to Dawson College and the École Polytechnique students, explaining to the friends of the dead and wounded students the logic of his policies.

Dawson College shooting tribute video

He has kept our soldiers in Afghanistan to clean up the mess left by Bush's policies. When will we leave? Well I figure about the same time as the US leaves Irak, with about the same result, nothing to show for it but bodybags. The list goes on and on.
Everyone knew that it was coming since for the last couple of weeks we have been seeing political ads. These ads focus exclusively on our PM. They show him as a soft and cuddly guy, who loves family, country, the environment. A really nice guy... vote for me and everything will be alright. Do they talk about his party and its accomplishments? Nope, not one word. Just about what a nice guy Harper is. What these ads don't show is that Stephen Harper has always been to the right, he would be perfectly at home with the Republicans (in fact he is great friends with Bush). He comes from the Alliance Party which had/has many members way the right of Attila the Hun. When the Alliance Party finally assimilated the Conservatives and took over their name, I don't think that changed their ideology, they just camouflaged it a bit more to get votes outside of the west.
So are the ads accurate? Put it this way, does putting a Borg into a Teletubby suit make him more cuddly?