Dear neighbour, about what's going on in Canada

I just loved this article ....

Washington file
Neil Macdonald

Dear neighbour, about what's going on in Canada
By: Neil Macdonald CBC News

My dear American neighbours,

I see the political crisis in Canada has finally made it into the Washington Post's Foreign Briefs column.

So, anticipating a flood of interest from all of you at the dog run in the morning, let me try to give you some idea of what's happening up there.

A few weeks ago, we had an election in Canada, a couple of weeks before yours, actually. A political party known as the Conservatives won.

Well, sort of. They didn't win in the sense that most of you understand winning. I'll get to that in a second.

They also aren't what most of you would consider conservative.

They support what you call socialized medicine, they believe in protecting a Canadian-controlled banking system, they believe in government as a vehicle for transferring wealth between regions, and they've actually muzzled party members who tried to make abortion a campaign issue.

In fact, instead of making his Sunday trip to church a photo opportunity, our Conservative leader refuses to discuss his faith in public. (Like many Americans, he's an evangelical Christian).

Different kettle of fish
So our Conservatives are a bit different from yours. Down here, you'd probably call them Democrats. And fairly liberal ones at that.

But, as I said, they won our last election, which is a pretty low-key affair compared to yours. The campaign lasted a few weeks instead of two years.

What's more, they won with only 37 per cent of the vote. Now, you can do that in Canada because our Parliament has three other political parties: The Liberals (again, pay no attention to the name, they tend to adapt their worldview as needed), the Bloc Québécois (a Quebec party that says it wants to break up the country, but hasn't actually done much about it for many years), and the NDP.

I'm not quite sure how to explain the NDP. The other parties like to call them socialists.

Some of their more doctrinaire members would like the government to nationalize or take a large financial stake in things like banks and manipulate the national economy by spending huge amounts of public money. You know, the sort of thing President George W. Bush has been doing this year.

I know, I know, it's confusing.

Funny old world, isn't it?

So. The Conservatives won our election and formed something called a minority government.

That means the Conservatives can basically be tossed out of office by the opposition parties whenever they feel like it, which usually happens after a year or two. Then there's an election.

This time, though, the opposition parties decided to throw out the government before it really even started governing. But instead of forcing another election, the opposition parties made a deal: they formed a surprise coalition and now they want to take power without consulting voters again.

Americans might have a hard time understanding this sort of thing, but it happens all the time in places like Israel and Italy. Wait, though. Uh, wake up. We're getting to the really interesting part.

The CBC connection
To take over, the opposition parties have to convince our head of state that they can govern effectively. President Bush is your head of state, at least until Barack Obama moves in.

But our head of state isn't elected. It's the Queen. And she's represented up there by someone called a governor general, who is appointed. Voters don't have anything to do with it.

Except for not being elected, a governor general is a lot like your vice-president. Sort of ceremonial. Our governors general travel a lot, cut ribbons, declare holidays for school kids and try to set a good example.

The current office holder, Michaëlle Jean, used to be a CBC reporter. Like me.

Actually, the one before her was once a CBC reporter, too. So were two others in the recent past. In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.

Letting a journalist decide
Like your vice-president, sometimes a governor general becomes unbelievably important. Right now, for example. Sooner or later, this former TV reporter is going to have to decide who runs Canada.

Now, the Conservatives aren't taking this state of affairs lying down.

They've been talking about shutting down Parliament for a while until they can think of some way to prevent the opposition parties from throwing them out. But they can't just do that. They'd have to convince the Governor General to let them.

It's all very dramatic, you have to admit. Right? Don't you? Hello?

I mean, we Canadians don't have all those big-mouthed cable anchors that you have, but you can imagine what they'd do with a situation like this.

It's the economy
Wait a second. I forgot to explain why all this is happening. Bear with me.

You see, Canada's economy is in trouble. Just like everybody else's.

So when the Conservatives won, most people expected them to turn on the spending taps, the way every other country in the developed world is doing.

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for some reason, decided not to.

In fact, last week he had his finance minister announce that the government intends to run a surplus in its next budget. Meaning the government intends to take more in taxes from Canadians than it needs to run the country.

(I know President Bush has never run a surplus. But Canadian governments have, every year for more than a decade, even when the supposedly spendy Liberals were in charge.)

Anyway, in the middle of an economic crisis, Harper's plan didn't go over well with the three opposition parties and they saw their chance.

So that's what's happening.

Actually, if you think about it, our prime minister is doing exactly what President Bush keeps saying he'd like to be doing, instead of authorizing another trillion or so every week in new bailouts.

Maybe it's not such a funny old world after all.

Governor General approves Stephen Harper's request to prorogue Parliament

Governor General approves Stephen Harper's request to prorogue Parliament

Governor General Michaelle Jean has granted Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament.

That is the headline this morning.

__________________________________________

I am not sure how I feel about what is going on these days in our Parliament.

The part of me that hates and distrusts Harper, thinks that this coalition is a great idea.

But then I think about the fact that it is being spear headed by a man none of us, including most Liberals themselves even want in power to begin with.

And then there is the man that wants to break up the country.

I wonder how this coalition could possibly be the answer.

Games, is what this feels like to me. Powerful, serious games.

Last night we watched on the CBC as Harper give his side of the story, then Dion. All I could think about was that this is unprecedented territory, this is history in the making and it was so boring.

I thought back to each and every time during the U.S. election when I heard Barak speak how I would be engaged, how I wanted to high five him. He had charisma and charm, you believed in him.

We have five parties, five potential leaders.

None, not a single one has yet to make we want to high five them. To stand behind them and say, I believe.

Where is this leader?

It is time for that person to come to our rescue, Canada deserves better than this.

November 11th

November 11th, a holiday that does not ask anything of us, except a little of our time, and respect for what it represents.

It does not want us to buy presents, there is no card, no chocolates to mark this occasion.

This holiday asks one thing of us, to take two tiny minutes out of our day and think about those that have given their lives in the name of freedom.

I am unsure if this holiday exists all over the world, here in Canada we call it Remembrance Day, the Americans Memorial Day I believe. What ever you call it, I hope you take two minutes of our time today and honour it.

15th - are you kidding me ...

I read in the paper today ...

Canada placed 15th among 17 peers, beating only Australia and the United States. Greenhouse gas emissions, high garbage production, and rampant overuse of fresh water were its biggest environmental problems.

I am not sure what frustrates me more, that we ended up 15th or that we beat out Australia and the United States. We should all be ashamed

We know better.

It is a historical night ...

Good Luck Barack.

Piggy Banks ...

This week there was a report released that informed us Canada has the best banking system in the world in place right now.

We are "safe".

Yeah for us.

The Bank of Canada lowered the borrowing rate by .5%, and the banks in their wisdom thought it in our best interest to not offer this to us.

We were offered half .25%.

Yesterday, our government gave the banks $25 billion.

Harper is quoted as saying

This is not a bailout of banks; this is a market transition that will cost the government nothing.

I am not sure how the government can give away $25 billion taxpayer dollars and then have us believe it will cost nothing.

Just google it ...

Last weekend we had lunch at my brother and sister in laws home.

Politics came up. Heather told us she was planning on voting for the Green Party, one of the reasons she cited was because they believed in dying with dignity.

I found it interesting that in that moment I realized that this was an issue that mattered to me, I mean really mattered, and yet I had no idea how any of the parties stood on the issue.

In fact it had not even occured to me to think about the issue.

I listen to the parties talk about issues like the economy, jobs, defence and recently thankfully the environment.

All very important issues, I am not debating that, but how interesting it was to learn that for the first time I wanted to dig deeper into who I was voting for.

When we got home, I was still thinking about it, and I mentioned to Terri that I was curious about how the other parties felt on the dying with dignity issue.

He says, give me five minutes I will just google it.

An hour later we were no closer to finding the answer.

Ordinary people ...

This blog's existence started with the post I put up on An Artists Wife.

Since that entry, we watched a Bravo special discussing this topic, the Federal and the U.S. Vice Presidential debate, and the politicians are now using the recession word they said they would never use.

I have been giving a lot of thought the past couple of weeks to having a place where I can document my thoughts on these types of issues.