My new American friend asked me to explain the election, wondered who I voted for.
Our system up here is a parliamentary based one. For American readers, its like we have a senate, and a congress, and whoever has the most members in congress gets to pick the president. The big difference is that there are more than two parties, and the lessor parties can hold the balance of power.
Now I think there are smart and dumb people of every political stripe, but what right versus left seems to come down to is that the right is business+religion and the left is people+environment.
I think people are most important. I'm open, tolerant, intellectual, caring, with a good knowledge of how society works (where did our societal institutions come from, for example). Ergo I'm on the left of the political spectrum.
In Canada, the parties from left to right are:
Green - NDP - Liberal - Bloc Quebecois - Conservative
No party truly represents me, but NDP is closest. I voted strategically, however, as the NDP candidate in my area had no chance of election and I sure as hell wasn't going to assist the Conservative candidate with winning.
Today's results do not make me happy, but fortunately it is a minority government, meaning that the Conservatives cannot just shove through whatever they want without finding someone to agree with them. I do suspect that they will be well-behaved so that they can get a majority government next time - their biggest albatross was being an "unknown".
So, politics aside, life goes on.
Perhaps today I will finally get to see that car I've been waiting to look at.
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