{"id":196,"date":"2008-10-06T01:01:58","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T06:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=196"},"modified":"2008-10-06T13:38:17","modified_gmt":"2008-10-06T18:38:17","slug":"canadian-politics-101-the-other-election-eh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2008\/10\/06\/canadian-politics-101-the-other-election-eh\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Politics 101: The Other Election, eh?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Canada is set to vote in less than two weeks on October 14th. \u00a0It&#8217;s a parliamentary system, so voter choices at the representative level (MP=member of Parliament) in each district (riding) determine who the prime minister is. \u00a0The major parties are the Conservatives (far right &amp; center-right), Liberals (center-left), New Democratic Party (left), Bloc Queb\u00e9cois (regional), &amp; the Greens. \u00a0The Bloc is a Queb\u00e9c-only party that has fallen out of favor this year. \u00a0The big issue this year is whether the Conservatives can get a majority government. \u00a0Currently, they have a minority government but with over 50% of the ridings (155 seats), they can get a majority, which means they would have much more power.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been talking about frames a lot, so let&#8217;s see how these play out in Canadian satire using kids to portray the party leaders. <strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rickmercer.com\/\">Rick Merce<\/a><\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rickmercer.com\/\"><strong>r<\/strong><\/a> is in the same vein as Stewart\/Colbert and a friend at Ipsos in Vancouver sent the following video around. \u00a0The players &amp; some perceptions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Stephen-Harper\/9106562109\">Stephen Harper<\/a>: \u00a0Conservative &amp; leader of minority government (&#8220;W&#8221;-like, from the oil-rich west [Alberta], hoping for a majority, emphasizing the economy and &#8220;stay the course&#8221; mentality, leader of party doing well in the polls now, good at framing &amp; evading)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Stephane-Dion\/7874631159\">Stephane Dion<\/a>: Liberal (embraced green issues &amp; carbon taxes, nerdy\/egghead reputation, has French accent and is linked to past separatist sentiments in Queb\u00e9c, leader of a party suffering from weakness now)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Jack-Layton\/6330284938?ref=s\">Jack Layton<\/a>: NDP (strength metaphor, charismatic, resurgence since Liberal party has faltered)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Elizabeth-May\/20647428344?sid=74e22a44133fdb150e2e4094e996e9bc&amp;refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Delizabeth%2Bmay%26n%3D-1%26k%3D400000000010%26sf%3Dr%26init%3Dq%26sid%3D74e22a44133fdb150e2e4094e996e9bc&amp;ref=s\">Elizabeth May<\/a>: Green (seen as splitting the vote on the left)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><object classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/4hfGy_b87gI&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>The <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/worldNews\/idUSTRE4950BI20081006\">latest polls<\/a><\/strong> show that the Conservatives will likely win, but fall short of a majority. \u00a0The NDP was hoping to be second, but they&#8217;re unlikely to overtake the Liberals. \u00a0The election will be decided by 45 &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/v5\/content\/election2008\/battleground-ridings.html\"><strong>battleground ridings.<\/strong><\/a>&#8221; \u00a0I&#8217;ve been following this election since I spend summers in Toronto and figuring out Canadian politics. \u00a0I must admit that I find the US election cycle fatiguing&#8230; January 2007 &#8211; November 2008. \u00a0In contrast, this Canadian election season officially started on September 7, 2008 when Parliament was dissolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada is set to vote in less than two weeks on October 14th. \u00a0It&#8217;s a parliamentary system, so voter choices at the representative level (MP=member of Parliament) in each district (riding) determine who the prime minister is. \u00a0The major parties are the Conservatives (far right &amp; center-right), Liberals (center-left), New Democratic Party (left), Bloc Queb\u00e9cois [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[356,27942,691,692,448],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comparative-politics","tag-canada","tag-comparative-politics","tag-parody","tag-rick-mercer-report","tag-satire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}