Katie says...

So, Katie (whose fault this whole sorry mess is) has complained that this blog is far too 'USA! USA! USA!' and nowhere near 'Oh Canada' enough. Well, given that it's been minus something revolting and snowing outside for as long as any of us can remember, this should come as no surprise. But, in the interest of inter-north American fairness, this will be a post about that little known area of interest, Canadian politics. This is Katie, by the way, going through her brief but always jolly British Nationalist phase. She went all Serbian after this and, as I write, is probably burning down some embassy or other.

There's going to be more than one election over this side of the pond this year. Oh yes. Canadians, too, will soon be 'going to the polls'. Rumour has it that said election will be called any day now. And once it's called, all mention of Senator 'so-called' Obama and Hillary 'Bill' Clinton will be just a vague memory. And then a few weeks later the whole thing will be over. Some would say that a Canadian general election is no election at all. Where are the endless debates, the months of campaigning? Where are the attack ads and the ugly rumours? Where is the super this and super that??

Canada does things a little differently, thank you very much. A month or so and it's done and dusted. This is probably due to the cold - who wants to open the door to a political campaigner when your nose might fall off? 

"But hey!" I hear you shout above the whistle of the tumbleweed, "who is going to win?". There are two main candidates - Stephen Harper and his Tories (yes, they have tories here too, except they're still scary and neo-con and don't hug hoodies) and Stephane Dion and his Liberals (they're all lovely and liberal, hence the name). Now you would think that, given Canada's reputation for general niceness and global citizenry, Dion would be a shoe-in. But no! Whisper it, somewhere out there, somewhere in the tundra, there lives not only a yeti but a whole slew of nasty right-wing Canadians. I know, shocking. But there's loads of them and Harper will almost certainly be voted back into office. Canadians will then, once again, wring their hands in angst while the rest of the world will, admittedly, fail to notice. It's the curse of Canada - everyone likes them but no-one really cares that much. Maybe if they met some of these nasty Canadians, they would like them slightly less. But they still wouldn't be bothered either way, if they were honest.

So there you have it, Katie, some proper (ahem) Canadian political punditry. Can we get back to the Democratic debate now? They're in Texas and talking cobblers about Cuba. Hillary wouldn't meet Castro's brother, apparently. To be fair, he probably wouldn't want to meet her very much, either.