Still, after being prompted, I did find myself writing out an emailed commentary on this week's Canadian federal elections. It was for a person who lives outside of Canada. I find it contained important, personal views. Therefore, as this blog is mainly a way for me to remember my own thoughts, I will include some of the edited text:
"I voted for Trudeau's party. However, many of my age do not really remember the original Trudeau-mania. From what I can gather, the father and son are both products and representatives of their respective generations.
This week's results were a sharp chastisement of the former party's style of leadership and its decade of entrenchment.
The Canadian election process is fascinating and blessedly short. The writ was dropped just 11 weeks ago, and this was the longest election campaign in a century and a half! The incumbent, Harper thought the could use his party's larger war-chest to outspend the other parties. He got right off to a horrible start with attack ads which proclaimed that 'Trudeau is just not ready' (for leadership).
Government here runs much less risk of becoming dysfunctional because of having multiple parties. Going into this one, we had three main parties: the "National Democratic Party", the "Conservative Party of Canada", and the winning "Liberal Party of Canada". The Green have only one MP from Vancouver Island and weren't able to gain any more seats. The BLOC elected just 10 seats from Quebec, being the historical separatist party only.
These Conservatives morphed from the old "Progressive Conservative" party and western-based "Reform" party during my time here. This system seems to open up so many more possibilities for constructive change. A two party system seems to foster an "us against them" in mentality and in practices.
The political spectrum, is less extreme in Canada too. One has to bear in mind that the departing Harper government is considered very right here, but would fall into a US centralist category both in fiscal and social beliefs. For example, gay marriage has been the countrywide law of the land since 2005. There's been no 'tea party' here either literally or figuratively. Of course, that alone translates into much less lunacy in the functioning of government. Canadians don't want governance to be a circus.
Justin, as we all seem to call him, is a breath of fresh air. He really campaigned hard in BC and it paid off. He has his own propensity for outdoor activity in BC and he had an educational and high school teaching stint here.
Unfortunately, my vote didn't really count this time. The one nagging problem with our electoral system is that, of course, we vote for MPs and not the party leader. The popular vote doesn't necessarily correspond to the members elected. That meant, my riding, which I knew to be NDP, elected the incumbent. So going into the elections I knew that my vote wouldn't really help to get the Liberals into power. As a country, we always discuss this after an election and forget about it until it's time to vote again."