rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

Post Traumatic Bloc Shock

by Beisan Zubi

I am still extremely unsettled by the election results, and am working through them with a furrowed brow.  I understand that a lot of the vote distribution issues all relate to our constitution, but they lack a basic sense of equality and reason. In order to prevent premature wrinkles, these conflicting points about the election need to be vented about:

1. The Green party and the Bloc Quebecois received only a difference of 3% of the of popular votes from the Canadian public, but the BQ emerged with 50 seats and the Greens with none. Quoi?
2. The BQ received half the number of votes that the NDP did, but leads them by 13 seats.
3. Quebec’s (some might say unfair) advantage in Members of Parliament in relation to population, stemming from appeasements in the 1980s, lead to this seat distribution inequality. A non-Quebecois vote counts less when ridings don’t balance their populations; is this a human rights issue, an inequality in our citizenship?
4. HOWEVER this inequality, and the Quebecois support for the BQ, is the main thing that stopped the Conservatives from getting their majority this election.
5. HOWEVER this only a specific circumstance, and overall proportional representation is the only fix to what seems like a fundamentally flawed system.
6. The NDP got more ridings this year which shows to me more Canadians are looking at it like a viable ruling party (although as a friend commented to me yesterday, “Jack Layton will not be Prime minister until he shaves that mustache.”)
7. The Liberals got LESS seats, which seems like a shock, and suggests that Canada is becoming less centrist and more polarized, which evokes a fear of our culture and political system of becoming more Americanized.
8. Obviously the efforts of those advocating strategic voting and Canadian pop stars making “We are the world”-type songs about climate change, does not affect voters en masse.  Maybe a telethon next time?
9. Less people voted yesterday than ever before in Canadian democratic history. Are we A) apathetic, B) lazy, C) ignorant, D) feeling disenfranchised, E) All of the above?
10. I never really worried about Alberta and Saskatchewan. They seemed like friendly salt-o-the-earth types, with fields of wheat and cows.  But I’ve never been more frightened of the concept of the idea of entire provinces, in exception to one riding each, voting Conservative. Who are these people and don’t they get the Colbert Report up there? Are they hallucinating on petroleum fumes?