The Maple Brief

An alternative guide to Canada

Canadians get to vote about once a year, thanks to the incredibly shaky nature of Canadian politics (there's a minority government in power at the moment). The choice isn't that great. We have:

Liberals

Centre-left, slightly more lefty than Labour in the UK. They were the ones in power until January 2006, spending most of the time giving out money and avoiding the fallout from the sponsorship scandal rather than actually governing. The sponsorship scandal, where money given out to promote federalism in Quebec mysteriously found its way into Liberal party coffers, eventually caught up with them and Canadians gave them the boot.

Conservatives

The leader, Stephen Harper, is now the Prime Minister. During the election campaign, the Liberals waged a PR war against him, painting him as a scary closet neo-con who would hang homosexuals given half the chance. Now in power, he's doing a reasonably successful job of proving he's not scary, but he still needs to work on his appearance. Closely resembling a tele-evangelist doesn't really help him that much.

NDP

Known in Ontario as the 'the party which banned the word Christmas'. When Ontario was governed by NDP premier Bob Rae (PM rules the country, premiers rule the provinces), it was all 'holiday trees' and 'seasons greetings'. Most people I've spoken to have never quite forgiven them for that, and seeing as Ontario is Canada's most populated province, the party doesn't really stand a chance.

Bloc Quebecois

The BQ's agenda is to separate from the rest of Canada, and thereby destroy the country as we know it. Seeing as Quebec needs constant diaper-changing by the government just to keep unemployment stats from going off the counter, I hardly see how it could function as an independent nation. But whatever. Most non-Quebecers have a deep mistrust of the BQ - and it doesn't help that its leader looks like Eric Idle's evil twin.