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I am, of course, a bit of a news and politics junkie. Tonight I watched the Canadian election with a genuine Canadian to help explain things to me. Wheee! I should have thought of this earlier. If I follow Canadian politics, there will be twice as many election nights to geek out upon!
Tonight's was really good, too. Too bad I hadn't been following until very recently, and I missed a lot of it because of Kendo. But it had everything a great election night needed: close races, surprising results, lots of uncertainty. All it needed was someone with a whiteboard yelling 'Manitoba! Manitoba! Manitoba!'
So now I'm having all kinds of fun reading up on the histories of the parties up there. Mmmm, parliaments. More than two parties makes everything so much more interesting. (And, imho, representative. Except the lack of separation of power freaks me out a little.) Particularly with the Bloc Quebecois, who are such a weird little wildcard. Mostly very leftist, but that whole separationist thing makes it all twisty. They don't run anyone outside of Quebec, but still get enough seats to be a power. They're completely 90 degrees to everything else. They were the opposition party once, which must have been great. 'We oppose this bill because it is not about Quebec independence.' Except, of course, in French. 'Nous nous opposons à cette projet de loi parce qu'elle n'est pas au sujet d'independance du Québec.' Repeat.
Tonight's was really good, too. Too bad I hadn't been following until very recently, and I missed a lot of it because of Kendo. But it had everything a great election night needed: close races, surprising results, lots of uncertainty. All it needed was someone with a whiteboard yelling 'Manitoba! Manitoba! Manitoba!'
So now I'm having all kinds of fun reading up on the histories of the parties up there. Mmmm, parliaments. More than two parties makes everything so much more interesting. (And, imho, representative. Except the lack of separation of power freaks me out a little.) Particularly with the Bloc Quebecois, who are such a weird little wildcard. Mostly very leftist, but that whole separationist thing makes it all twisty. They don't run anyone outside of Quebec, but still get enough seats to be a power. They're completely 90 degrees to everything else. They were the opposition party once, which must have been great. 'We oppose this bill because it is not about Quebec independence.' Except, of course, in French. 'Nous nous opposons à cette projet de loi parce qu'elle n'est pas au sujet d'independance du Québec.' Repeat.