Our cousin to the north suggested something was brewing up there in the Canadian elections. So I paid attention to the TPM preview. Even though it was titled Yes, America, There Is A Canada, it took a google news search to even find election results.
So here's is another U.S. take on the story, a business-oriented one from the LA Times (for that's what counts about Canada--our biggest oil supplier and chief trading partner, you see.) It allows that the Canadian elections were "surprisingly interesting." Could we get any more condescending? I guess we're not afraid of their terrorists or nukes.
Personally I found the results unsurprisingly confusing, since it's a parliamentary system, and the parties are different (the Liberals are middle of the road, the Conservatives are for single-payer national healthcare, and the New Democrats are to the left of any of our Democrats.) Even the colors are different: the conservatives are blue, and though there is a Green Party, the New Democrats are orange. Gee, we don't even have orange.
The upshot seems to be that it was a tremendous victory for the New Democrats and also a tremendous victory for the Conservatives. The NDP won a bunch of seats--three times as many as it had before-- and became the party with the second-largest representation in the legislature, but the Conservatives won a majority for the first time anyone has done so in ten years. This analysis from the Globe & Mail says it was a result tied to some familiar-sounding economic divides. But what does it all mean? I await enlightenment.
[Top photo is Vancouver, BC. On the left wing is Hamilton, Ontario.]
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