Vite!

Perhaps Canada has simply succumbed to election fever by proximity. Last week, the Progressive Conservative (read, very conservative) Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called for a new election, barely two years after the last national election. Or maybe he just became incredibly envious of the Americans' enthusiasm for their upcoming election. Maybe a choice, maybe an echo, maybe a disease: regardless, the federal Canadian politicians are all off their starting blocks because they have only until October 14 before the election is all done. Just think of that. The beginning and the end of a national election in a five week period. Wow! Feel the envy!

At the moment, the Progressive Conservatives are presiding over a minority government because they don’t have a majority in parliament. But they have enough members to cobble together some kind of majority with others, but it hasn’t lasted very long. Things are looking good for the PC’s though as their brand of politics seems to be catching on. The PC are a mix of social conservatives and neocons, from my view, but they may be better (or worse) than that. They are up against the Bloc Quebecois, a sort of center left party that espouses Quebec’s departure from Canada; the Liberals, a sort of center left party that prefers Quebec to stay in Canada and is otherwise noted for its undistinguished leader--a Quebecer whose French is significantly better than his English—and its earlier-in-this-decade financial scandals; the NDP, the most left party, whose leader is a man, following a decade of women as party leaders; and the Greens, the environmental party which holds one seat in Parliament, but only as a result of strange events. The PC's Harper is something of a George Bush fan. To his credit, I should note that Harper, whose native tongue is English, is said to speak better French than the Liberal Leader speaks English. I’ve heard Harper’s French; it’s not that good. We get quite a bit of mail from Mr. Harper, assuring us, in English, that he is going to do the right thing for us and that the liberals are (have I heard this before?) nothing more than ‘tax and spend’ guys. Somehow, I doubt that, but maybe his message is more successful in Quebec.

At the moment, the secessionist Bloc Quebecois is doing poorly in Quebec. Perhaps those folks have grown tired of the idea of secession and have decided just to slog on with the rest of the country, even if in a different language. However, the lagging Bloc support is going not to the liberals, where one might expect it to go but instead to the PC, improving their chances of getting an actual majority. Harper’s French, again, perhaps.

Here in our own riding, we have the one and only Green Party member currently sitting in Parliament. We didn’t elect him, though (that’s the royal We since we at our house do not vote, of course). Two years ago, the Sunshine Coast elected Blair Wilson, who was a member of the Liberal Party. But in the intervening short period of time, Mr. Wilson got in a little bit of scandal himself (election money, not sex) and was thrown out by the Liberals. Still, he had been elected. He sat as an independent for a bit, but then crossed over to the Green Party. This gave the Greens a presence in Parliament, and now gives them the opportunity to have their party leader (not Blair Wilson, of course: he is simply their only Parliamentary member) appear in the national debates that will be occurring in the coming months.

Given all the complexity, I almost wish I could vote, but on the other hand….well…maybe not. The Sunshine Coast has a big Green Party presence; there are lots of very progressive environmentalist types here. But if the Green Party candidate’s most notable commitment to the Green Party’s values and policies is that he came inside when the Greens offered him a place to sit down? Well, other peoples’ elections are probably never very clear to an outsider. But, at least in Canada, they don't drag on forever.