Jack Layton's message to youth

From his last letter to Canadians:

All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

Wearing orange for Jack

I went home at lunch to change. Apparently the only orange shirt I own is a Valdy & the Hometown band one that my dad got at a concert in the 70s. I think Jack would have approved, though.

RIP Jack Layton

For those of you who haven't yet heard, Jack Layton passed away this morning after a long struggle with cancer.

Jack, you were an inspiration. Leader of the NDP - and, for a short while, of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition - the most friendly and personable politician that Canada has seen in a long time. I always liked that you had a PhD but you never seemed to be part of the academic elite, you could sit down and have a beer with miners or steelworkers. I liked that you and Olivia were such an awesome kick-ass political couple, and I loved that you had such a great sense of humour. I hope that’s one of the things they remember about you, and all the awesome one-liners you had in that last leader’s debate this spring. You were always ready to stick up for the little guy, Jack. I loved your awesome mustache and the fact that you were friends with the guys from 90’s leftist comedy rock band Moxy Fruvous. It’s so tragic that you’ve been taken away just at this time, when you’ve led the orange tide to unprecedented heights.

I don’t care if I look like Halloween, I’m wearing orange and black. Rest in peace, Jack.

And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain

So. It's been a good run. Over the course of the election, I wrote 100 posts (this is the 101st on this blog). And you know what? For all of our activism, the voter turnout only went up by 1%.

Where do we go from here? I could keep on blogging about Canadian politics but now that we're in a majority government situation, there's not likely to be a vote anytime soon so the title of this blog, at least might be a little irrelevant. Also I would have to start taking stances on policy issues not related to youth and student issues, something I've been trying to avoid doing this election because this blog was intended to appeal to youth voters of all political leanings (as long as they believe in the Westminster System...).

I haven't decided on my blogging future. I may just go back to my old blog on feminist issues. Or I may stop entirely.

As for the future of the country? Economists are pleased, claiming that the Harper majority will stabilize the economy. They talk a lot about how this majority means less uncertainty, but I'm not too sure.

Oh, I'm not all doom and gloom like the folks over at The Galloping Beaver.

There will be no sudden declaration of martial law or dramatic day when CPC stormtroopers surround Stornaway or round up dissidents in the night - there won't need to be. That nice, soft-spoken, Christian economist and hockey dad who just wants to protect us from the bad guys doesn't work that way. There will just be a steady drip of manufactured small crises that lead to privatization, deregulation, and "temporary" security measures, until we get back to the good old days of the robber barons.

I'm not that cynical. But I am nervous.

From my perspective, this majority means more uncertainty, not less. Is certainty measured in whether or not there is a clear leader in the House of Commons? One constant you will always see in a minority government is compromise. The parties compromise in order to run the country, which means things tend to run down the middle of the political spectrum, nothing much drastic happens to get either side too riled up. In other words, outside of Question Period, the country is calm. Change is slow and gentle. But majorities can do things--big things--drastic things. And often, in the past, they have surprised their electorate. I find much uncertainty in not knowing what the Conservatives will choose to do with their majority, and yet knowing that they CAN do whatever they choose.

And even if the economy initially stabilizes due to perceived lack of uncertainty--the economy is largely a psychological beast after all--with the strength of the NDP, union party par excellence, how can there not be striking?

A friend of mine, a recent graduate of business school, thinks the country is going to hell in a handbasket. She's appalled by the Conservative majority, hating their social conservatism, and possibly even more appalled by the strength of the NDP and their left-wing economics. Where is my centrist party? she asks.

Another friend sees the rise of the NDP as a positive development. The polarization of opinion in this country is a good thing, according to her, because the parties can differentiate themselves more. Centrist parties and special interest parties like the Bloc have no place in the current ideological landscape.

Can we reconcile all our opposing views? I don't know anymore. We're moving farther and farther away from the conciliatory style, all about compromise and attempted consensus, championed by early prime ministers like Laurier, and more and more towards the down-and-dirty uber-partisan uncompromising two-party republic along the lines of the US. Some people think this is a good thing, and others want to move to Australia.

But maybe my favourite prediction for the future is this. "Stephen Harper is going to pull a Brian Mulroney," said my Awesome Housemate last night. "He's going to do all this crap, and then everyone will hate him, and at the next election he'll lose everything and the NDP will win."

Oh, my inner instincts are warring between delight at the political games and sadness at what this will mean for the parliamentary system I love so dearly...

Electoral Politics: Going Places

Citizen Engagement: Going Up (say this in an elevator voice)

Thanks to social media campaigns and the uprisings in the Middle East, Canadian voters are super engaged this election. But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Everyone is particularly impressed that young people seem to be so engaged.

Montreal-based Apathy Is Boring, one of several non-partisan organizations that have sprung up to promote increased voting in this federal election, hailed the busy advance polls as a harbinger of hope for Canadians’ interest in the political process.

“WE. ARE. DOING IT,” the group boasted after the Easter weekend numbers came in.
“Let’s keep turning up in record numbers to prove that young Canadians care about democracy, and that apathy is boring.”

Coalitions: Going Down

While Stephen Harper is ratcheting up his coalitions-are-scary-things rhetoric, and more and more Canadians seem to believe him, coalitions are both normal and stable in other parts of the world.

“We’ve have been forming coalition governments at the national and state level for a long time,” says Norman Abjorensen, a leading political commentator and professor at the Australia National University in Canberra. “And the sun has always risen the following day.”

The typical pattern in Australian federal politics, says Abjorensen, is either a leftish Labour government or a coalition of right-of-centre Liberals and rural Nationals.

“We change governments rarely here,” he says. “Only six changes in more than 60 years. No coalition has fallen except at the ballot box or on the floor of the house when in a minority in 1941.”

Western democracies such as Canada and the United Kingdom are behind the times, argues London School of Economics political scientist Jonathan Hopkin.

Not that Canadians haven’t thought about it:

A few days after Trudeau’s comeback victory in the 1980 federal election, he invited NDP leader Ed Broadbent to his office.

“I had a surprise for him,” Trudeau, who had just led his Liberals to a majority government, recalled in his 1993 book Memoirs.

“In an attempt to negotiate some sort of alliance with his party, I offered him and his colleagues some senior positions in our cabinet,” wrote Trudeau, explaining that his scanty take in Western Canada — just two seats, both in Manitoba, out of 143 Liberal MPs — had left him craving some of the widespread western representation of the NDP.

National unity, Trudeau believed, “would be strengthened if we could consolidate our forces.” He noted that there had been similar Liberal-NDP collaboration talks “on and off since (Lester B.) Pearson’s day,” but that Broadbent, who feared that his party would lose its power and credibility, quickly declined the offer.

Women in Politics: Going Nowhere

I mean that two ways: women who are in politics aren’t leaving anytime soon, but women are making very few gains in politics right now.

Anita Neville, a Liberal Member of Parliament and former minister for the status of women, agrees that more needs to be done to recruit women, and that the tone of Canadian politics is a barrier to that goal.

“I don’t think any of the parties have done a great job recruiting candidates,” she said at a campaign rally in Winnipeg, Manitoba last week.

“The rancor and nastiness of the political discourse turns off” many women, Neville said, adding that the atmosphere before the last election was “a really ugly Parliament.”

The New Democratic Party said April 11 it had set an “historic first” by having women as 40 percent of its nominated candidates. Still, Equal Voice said on its website that only 31 percent of NDP candidates in what it gauges are winnable ridings are women. That figure compares with 27 percent for the Liberals and 22 percent for the Conservatives. The Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment yesterday about this issue.

Coast-to-Coast with Editorials

So this is pretty neat. It’s a collection of abridged editorials from across the country. I, of course, cannot refrain from adding my commentary.

From the Vancouver Sun:

…the Conservatives should be returned to Parliament with a majority. A minority government will be unstable at a time when we need stability. Without a majority, Canadians will have no idea who their leader will be. The fact is that the opposition could defeat the government on the budget within a matter of weeks of the next sitting of Parliament. Then, either Ignatieff (or possibly his successor, whoever that might be) or Layton could ask the Governor-General to invite one or the other or both of them to form a government.

. . . Canada can't afford an election that delivers a result with so much uncertainty.

. . . Despite the Tories' flaws, however, a Conservative majority is the only path that at this time leads us to a Canada that will remain the prosperous, peaceful and predictable country in which we are fortunate enough to live.

False. We are not a republic. Not knowing who the leader of our government will be doesn’t really change much. The prime minister is the leader of the party that forms the government. Let’s not inflate the position with too much importance.

Honestly, majorities are scarier because they’re the closest this country can legally get to a dictatorship. Minorities have to compromise, not be reckless—be predictable. Majority governments have historically been the most unpredictable, and passed the most bills that weren’t in their platforms.

And you know what? No matter what happens in the House of Commons, the core of the civil service remains stable, with just a few changes at the upper bureaucratic levels. Civil servants will be peeved if the upper administration keeps changing on them like that, but the people who actually do the stuff to run our country are going to be here doing the stuff that runs the country regardless of the situation in the House.

From the Winnipeg Free Press:

That the country even talks about coalitions composed of weak parties focused on buying votes, instead of focusing on the fragile economic recovery, is all the evidence Canadians should need to conclude that seven years of minority government, of the posturing and name-calling and brinksmanship that results when no one ultimately is in charge, must end. Canada must get more serious about its present predicaments and future prosperity. That leaves only the Conservatives.

To be sure, Conservatives over the past five years, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in particular, have contributed much to the rancour that today sours our polity. But just as surely, over the past five years no political party or leader has shown more disciplined commitment to the engine that makes all else possible — the economy. For all the talk of a hidden, right-wing agenda, none has emerged over five years and there is no evidence it will over the next four.

Oh, please. Our economic recovery is hardly fragile, little thanks to the Conservatives. It was Paul Martin’s banking regulations that left us in such a good place to being with. And as I mentioned earlier, no one ever is “ultimately in charge.” The prime minister’s powers are supposed to be fairly limited, to a leadership role over his own party, and the ability to appoint people and recommend things to the governor general. In fact, the Speaker of the House is far more “ultimately in charge” of the House of Commons.

Of course a “hidden, right-wing agenda” hasn’t emerged over the last five years—that kind of thing is really difficult to have with a minority government. The fact that we haven’t seen a hidden right-wing agenda doesn’t mean there isn’t one (not that I’m saying there is).

From the Halifax Chronicle Herald:

Voting intentions have moved to the poles as we have got closer to the polls, turning this into an effective contest of the NDP left and the Tory right.

You can peg this partly on Prime Minister Stephen Harper being a polarizing leader. And also on his strategy of eking out a majority by winning over targeted demographic groups in a few marginal ridings instead of aiming to make the Tories a bigger-tent party.

That left a lot voters essentially disengaged. But they have decided they want to be heard in this election. And they've been jumping to Jack Layton to do that . . .

It's an astonishing result when most people, at heart, are probably still somewhere in the middle, not looking either for a big expansion of government, or a drastic shrinkage of the social safety net, but simple competence in managing the economy and public finances and in ensuring crucial public services like health care are there when needed.

True that. Truuue that.

"Is Stephen Harper a Hologram," and Other Pressing Questions of our Times

In Maclean's this week, Rick Mercer joined the press corps and followed the leaders around their campaigns, prompting him to ask the titular question.

The Harper campaign is far and away the most disciplined, the most professional and the most scripted. Every word is on a teleprompter, it is delivered in exactly the same way, and the Prime Minister does something I have, in a lifetime of watching live performers onstage, never seen before: he actually stops and sips his water in the same spot every time. Nothing is left to chance. Either that or he is a hologram on a loop.

This is what happens without the teleprompter:

And I will never forget the chilly Newfoundland morning when Stephen Harper faced not just a disappointingly low turnout, but a cantankerous teleprompter that left him standing on centre ice at a hockey rink in total silence for seven long seconds. Eventually our quick-witted leader said, “Jeremy, could you bring me my notes?” a sentence he kept repeating until Jeremy did just that. Thank God for Jeremy, because this mercifully allowed Harper to begin the same speech that he had given 50 times since the campaign began. Nine minutes later it was over: “Chaos is lapping at our shores,” “thank you and goodbye.”

The Liberal and NDP campaigns sound like a lot more fun. Meanwhile, Mercer finishes off with this reflection on the changing nature of campaigning:

Very soon a national leader is going to make a quantum leap and launch a national campaign by staying home. He or she will enter a bunker in Ottawa and from there they will Skype streaming video into 10 curling rinks in 10 provinces in one night. They will hold a dozen town halls in a single afternoon. They will take or refuse questions from all over Canada from all sorts of people. By staying home they will reach more Canadians.

I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon--I think Canadians still very much value a politician who is willing to come out and meet with them personally. But it's a thought.

Hologram or not, Stephen Harper is considered by Canadians to be "the best to get things done", while Jack Layton narrowly wins as the leader who would make the best prime minister. Michael Ignatieff polled a distant third, with Canadians apparently finding him neither competent nor likeable.

Study Break for Democracy

The sun is shining, the daffodils are out, and I should be studying, but the news is calling to me. So I am taking a study break and it is COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED because it's for democracy.

Since the orange surge, Jack Layton might be downshifting in order to avoid missteps and keep criticism at bay. Meanwhile in the Harper camp a whole new scandal breaks loose (as you'll know if you watched The National between the Habs game and the Canucks game last night). The Tories' optics aren't so good these days at all; the Liberals recently got their hands on a compilation they made of Harper's most incriminating and controversial quotes. Note to self: if my leader says lots of controversial and incriminating things, don't collect them and and organize them nicely in alphabetical order by subject matter, because my biggest rival WILL find it. Also: if I don't collect them all into one big binder it's so much easier for me to say, "I have no idea what you're talking about!" when someone brings them up. It's like the long-form census.

Speaking of the Liberals, Michael Ignatieff admitted today that he smoked pot when he was younger (probably in grad school). Consensus: "It obviously didn't ruin my life but a glass of wine is so much more relaxing." (that's paraphrased, obviously)

This Morning's News

Somebody who is not a student finally realized how stupid a May 2nd election is for student voter turnout. There is a youth debate tonight in Ottawa, streaming here at 7pm EST. Business leaders are freaking out because apparently an NDP government wouldn't be market-friendly. The Habs are going into Game 7, the Canucks won their series, and Patrick Chan set a world record. I think that covers it, Canada.

Who said this election wasn't going to change anything?

Things are shaping up for this to be a historic election. First of all, voting at the advance polls jumped 35% from last election. This is part of a general trend seeing more people vote at advance polls, accompanied by the fact that they fell on a long weekend and also, I think, greater awareness of the advance polls. So it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a big jump in overall voter turnout. The advance polls in the riding where my school is ran through 60% more voters than last election. In this student-heavy riding, this might be due to vote mobs, the fact that there are no exams on Good Friday, or the fact that most students are going to be out of the city and off to summer jobs before May 2nd.

Besides a potential voter turnout revolution, things are looking good for a potential Green victory in Elizabeth May's riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, BC. (Saanich-Gulf Islands, was, by the way, a trending topic in the Twittersphere today.) Both the Liberal and NDP candidates have environmental activist cred, so it seems the riding is environmentally friendly in general.

And, one of the biggest upsets--polls show the NDP leading the Liberals in support. They're predicting a Conservative minority of around 130 seats with an NDP official op with about 100. People in Ontario are freaking out remembering Bob Rae's disastrous NDP provincial government, but I had dinner tonight with someone from Nova Scotia and someone from Manitoba. Both of these provinces are currently under NDP government, and both are getting along just fine. "The Liberals are just falling away," one suggested. "There's just less interest in a centrist party. My problem on a federal level is that I'm fiscally conservative, but left socially, and there's no party for that." Too true.

Anyway, they're calling it the Orange Crush:

And, even more orange crush-ing, here are the results when people were asked to name both their first and second choices:

That's the majority of people polled putting the NDP in their top two, yo! Totally throwing that in the face of everyone who says this election isn't going to change anything. Now there are definite problems with polling data, so let's not count our MPs before they hatch. But anyway, orange crush. I am drinking some right now (for non-NDP-related reasons). Also:



UPDATE: I picked that song because it has orange crush in the lyrics, but I forgot how depressing it was. Pro the NDP's promise to get troops home from Afghanistan? Anyway...

End-of-the-Long-Weekend Brain Break!

These Hipster Harpers brought to you via my Awesome Housemate, who is quite clever and also really into memes.

Looking for something to cook this week? Why not try family recipes from the party leaders? Try Harper's Mexican lasagna (so multi-cultural!), Ignatieff's pasta and baked vegetables (so health conscious and with an easy vegetarian option!), Jack Layton's gumdrop cake (so sweet and sugary just like Jack!), or Elizabeth May's Charleston Light Dragoon Punch (also, "the iron fist in the velvet glove," may have to try this one...).

Looking for something to do right this very minute in order to procrastinate? Why not take the federal election 2011 leaders' quiz? I got 10/20, and I totally judge Michael Ignatieff for preferring asparagus to chocolate. Who does that?

Video time!

John Roby, The Harper Song. Love the bluesy feel.



Jack Layton gives an impromptu piano concert today at lunch.



Also sings "Cockels and Mussels" on an airplane. I think I sang this song in Girl Guides as a child...



Aaaaaaand one more Hipster Harper to close it all off:

Things for the Reading

1) The Liberals have been pushing the idea that Canadians shouldn't trust Harper with a majority, but this issue doesn't seem to be motivating too many Canadians. Meanwhile, Harper sidesteps the question. And Richard Foot reflects on the former Reform Party's political integrity, which has sadly disappeared from the current incarnation of Conservatives.

t seems almost fanciful now, but in the 1993 and 1997 federal elections, candidates for the Reform Party were required to sign a contract committing them to the politics of integrity. If elected, their actions would be governed not by the partisan demands of their party but by the will of their constituents and above all, their own moral conscience.

Keith Martin, the British Columbia MP who came to Ottawa as a Reformer and was later elected as a Liberal, always kept the old document in his briefcase during his years in office as a reminder, he says, of how things ought to be.

"That's frankly why I joined the Reform Party," he says. "We had a very democratic mandate."

Seventeen years after Martin arrived in Parliament, political integrity seems a rather a quaint and quixotic notion, discarded amid the dark thickets of tactical scheming, rule-bending and permanent party warfare that consume federal politics today.

Oh, nostalgia. So bitter and so sweet. Martin compares the disaffection of MPs to battered wife syndrome.

Political integrity, once undermined mostly by sex, money and patronage, is now also being eroded by more disturbing trends: the erosion of democratic rules and customs, and the decline of civil discourse.

"Parliament is a sham," shouted Maclean's magazine from its front page recently.

The House of Commons is fading into irrelevance. Budget details are now leaked to the media before they are tabled in Parliament. Prime ministers float policies and legislation — even decisions about going to war — in speeches to Rotary clubs or interviews on television, rather than in the House.

Voters are routinely mocked. Politicians elected to sit with one party cross the floor with the promise of a cabinet job in another.

MPs are afraid to speak their minds, instead reciting 'talking points' issued by cadres of rabidly partisan, unelected apparatchiks in the service of party leaders.

Laws, such as the fixed-date election law, are flouted by the very people who create them.

Parties — once grassroots organizations that fuelled the democratic process — are now hollow shells, serving only as brand names for leaders and their professional marketing teams at election time.

And young voters are so inured to this that, nonplussed, they consider it all a part of the greater political game. ...Sorry, that was my bitterness slipping in there. I hope reading things like this will convince people that the partisan mudslinging we've got now isn't "just how it is"!

The current election, rather than being a contest of ideas, has become a campaign of fear: in speeches and television attack ads the parties stoke fear of secret coalitions and hidden agendas, fear for the future of health care, fear of economic meltdown, fear of Quebec separatism. The leaders and their advisers seek power by scaring voters, rather than inspiring them.

True that!

2) One of the biggest stories these past few days has been the sudden surge of NDP support in opinion polls. Here is an interesting perspective on the NDP's historical position at the balance of power, which makes the excellent point that the NDP's gains actually don't matter that much to Stephen Harper since they're mostly taking Liberal and Bloc support anyway. Countering that is this reality check on the accuracy of opinion polls. Not only do pollsters mainly call landlines (not hitting youth voters), so many people have caller ID now and won't pick up for a 1-800 number, and those who do usually don't want to spend the twenty minutes. So realistically, the demographic represented the best in polling numbers is seniors. But polls still make good stories in the news media, especially since all the parties released their platforms so early this year.

3) Happier thoughts! Let's read about the youth vote movement, about fighting voter apathy, and about the 120 candidates under 30!

Peter Mansbridge's voice is so much nicer than anyone else's, but then, we already knew that

Peter Mansbridge has been interviewing all the leaders. And since Peter Mansbridge should totally be our king, you should go watch!

Elizabeth May

Jack Layton

Michael Ignatieff

Stephen Harper

You might remember that Ignatieff's interview set off some firecrackers with his talk of forming a government if the Conservatives fail to gain the confidence of the House. And the Galloping Beaver has an analysis of Harper's interview that is pretty interesting.

Mid-Week Brain Break

I don't know about you, but I sure could use some silly right now. Let us see what the Internet has unearthed...

Ah ha! Vintage Voter has pictures of the party leaders as young'uns. Here is one of my favourites, Harper's high school year book picture:

Yep, that's ol' Steve-o. Considering the fate of the long form census, looks like reality is still his pet peeve. Anyway, the others are just as completely hilarious, so click through to the end. I also think they need to add this picture, of Jack Layton at a Star Trek convention.

Also, the leaders as Muppets:

Speaking of childhood memories... do you guys remember Raffi? Because IT'S RAFFI OH MY GOD IT'S RAFFI!!!!!!!



So Decision Canada started with celebrity Stephen Harper hair makeovers, which are pretty funny, and then progressed to "Chicks with Michael Ignatieff Eyes," which is just really really weird. What are they going to do next, babies with Jack Layton mustaches?

A couple of neat things. If you're interested, the CBC has a comparison of campaign ads. Also, you should go check out Vote Lab, where you can cast a virtual vote to see how different result would be under an alternate electoral system such as mixed member proportional representation.

The newest twitter celebrity

If you weren't watching/tweeting the debate last night you missed this woman:



Her name is Mme Paillé and she's asking about unemployment in those over 50. She herself is currently unemployed.

Well, of course, the leaders all spent the next 20 minutes trying to prove how their own platform planks would help poor Mme Paillé. The twitterverse was confused for a while, and then we realized that Mme Paillé was the "Joe the Plumber" everyman type for this election and "Mme Paillé" became the number 3 top trending topic in Canada. And then someone made a facebook fan page for her. The CBC has a collection of the best tweets.

Anyhow. The Journal de Montréal interviewed Mme Paillé for her reaction to the whole thing. She thinks Layton and Ignatieff did the best job at answering her initial question, and said Harper "had no empathy" for her situation.

Now people are offering her jobs over twitter but she's waiting to see if any come up in her area.

Oh, Mme Paillé. Hero of the people.

UPDATE: Because the CBC decided to post a new article five minutes after I posted this. So apparently there were about six facebook groups, one of which declared Mme Paillé the winner of the debate, and one of which declared her the new minister of labour. Not too shabby. Someone also suggested that she should be in charge of the next referendum.

If you weren't watching the NHL draft lottery you may have noticed there was a debate

So there was a debate. It was interesting. Actually, no, that's a complete lie. It was really, really boring. Except for when they yelled at each other. Stephen Harper didn't look directly at the camera or at the other leaders, stayed very calm, spoke in a patronizing tone, downright lied more than a few times, and said, "That's simply not true" a whole lot. Jack Layton was friendly, made some good points, called Harper out for having changed his ideals from when he first arrived in Ottawa, and basically turned out very well. Gilles Duceppe attacked Harper (his strategy this whole campaign), said a few things about Quebec that I could TELL the second came out of his mouth would be misinterpreted/misquoted, and got a bit angry which made his English a little bit sloppy. Michael Ignatieff did the best at bringing up youth issues, made some very insightful and incisive remarks about Harper's rule, and produced the most soundbites. Like he was basically speaking in soundbites. Very history prof. Obviously as a history student I approve, although he used a lot of what I call "essay words".

If there are awards, then Harper wins the one for cool-headedness. However he somehow managed to not really answer the questions put to him by the other leaders. He dismissed talk of his contempt charge, trust, and accountability, and shied away from talking about the Auditor General's report that he misquoted. He was also very dismissive and patronizing towards the other leaders, their platforms, and their points.

Jack Layton was definitely the most friendly and personable. Ignatieff called him "Jack" throughout the debate (maybe the other leaders did too but I didn't notice) and he somehow manage to seem more human and more normal than the other leaders. He also had a few good burns against each of the other leaders, especially Ignatieff's absence from the House of Commons and Harper's change of opinion since he came into power.

I personally love Gilles Duceppe, although he doesn't come across nearly as well in English as he does in French. I thought he seemed a little emotional in this debate--although I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, the idea that we should have unemotional and therefore impartial leaders is kind of a fallacy. He absolutely ATTACKED Stephen Harper with the 2004 coalition agreement, which shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who's been following him so far. Unfortunately Duceppe's comments about multiculturalism not working in the Quebec context were misinterpreted. It's important to remember that Quebec's model of integration is different from the model of multiculturalism in the rest of Canada, but IS NOT ASSIMILATION. (Sidenote: as the daughter of an immigrant I personally feel that integration works better than multiculturalism. The problem with multiculturalism is that everybody cares so much about what piece of the cultural mosaic you come from when you just consider yourself Canadian.)

Michael Ignatieff WINS on youth issues and WINS on women's issues and WINS on immigration issues and WINS on sound-bite production. But he did get a little bit passionate--as I mentioned before NOT A BAD THING. Also he didn't have a good response to Layton's accusation that he's absent a lot from the House of Commons, or any of the accusations that his platform has a lot of the same holes in it as the Conservative one. And while Ignatieff may have won on youth and women's issues, by being the only leader to actually bring them up (other than gang violence), he really didn't say that much on them.

Anyway. I wish they would have covered some different issues, or at least not always let each question turn into the same argument over and over again. I also would have loved to see them scream insults at each other but maybe that's just me.

Memes! Duceppe, Harper, Layton.

How come the best tv spots are only on French channels?

Campaign Update--April 7

Bah. I don't have time to write several nice long thoughtful posts today, because I Work Hard for My Tuition. So instead here's a couple of quick hits.

Stephen Harper finally apologized to the people who have been booted out of Conservative rallies, saying, "If anybody is kept out of any of our events that is there to hear our message, we obviously apologize to them. Our interest is in having as many people out to hear our message as we can. We are having huge meetings, we had another huge one last night. And we want people to hear our message." Personally, I prefer this headline.

Why am I not surprised that John Baird doesn't know what a flash mob is? The Conservative MP told reporters that "I'm not sure what a flash mob is but it sounds a bit disconcerting."

Apparently, happy people are more likely to vote than unhappy people. This might explain some additional things about low youth voter turnout.

The NDP is committed to fighting crime, particularly gang violence, in a prevent-crime-by-giving-people-something-constructive-to-do way rather than in a build-mega-prisons-and-increase-minimum-sentences way.

Read this awesome article about what happens when you exclude young people who are trying to get involved in politics.

Campaign Song Time!

New, better way to relate to political parties: which one shares your taste in music?

We all know by now that Stephen Harper is a John Lennon fan, and not too freaked out by Lady Gaga. However, his campaign song takes a bit of a different tone. (Better Now by Collective Soul--lyrics) Curiously, none of these artists is Canadian.



The Liberals cheat by having two different theme songs, which is actually very characteristic. Both from Canadian artists.

(Wingstock by Ashley MacIsaac)



(Jumpstart by These Kids Wear Crowns--lyrics)



The NDP don't have an official campaign song, but this has been played a lot at their rallies (by a Canadian alt-rock band). (Believe in Me by Sloan--lyrics)



Meanwhile, the Bloc have written their own song, "Parlons Qc". It has a bluesy/swingy feel, maybe a bit Neo-Trad, and was composed by the guitarist from Les Colocs.



Finally, the Green Party doesn't have an actual campaign song, but spoken word artist Winona Linn is awesome.



So, there you have it. Which party's song choice do you prefer?

On another note, I've always been partial to TROOPER's "Raise a Little Hell" for mobilizing voters, but since the theme of this election seems to be surprising everyone with a massive youth voter turnout, perhaps BTO's "You ain't Seen Nothing Yet" is more appropriate. (Lyrics.)