On Canada’s New Prime Minister

Last monday, Canada, everyone’s favorite forgettable country, held an election to appoint its next prime minister, and nobody seems to care. The election was primarily fought between the three major parties who have prominent roles in Canada’s government. First, the New Democratic Party (NDP), an extreme leftist group led by candidate Tom Mulcair, second, the Liberal Party of Canada led by Justin Trudeau, son of former PM Pierre Trudeau and finally the Conservative Party of Canada, lea by incumbent prime minister Stephen Harper.The NDP is the furthest left of the three and is a socially-democratic party that promotes socialism in the country. The NDP has consistently been the third largest party in Canadian Parliament and the smallest of the three prominent parties in the recent election. Among other things, the party pushes for tax increases, especially for corporations, in hopes of promoting a budget surplus, fight for environmental reforms in extreme lengths, promote gender, racial and LGBTQ equal rights, as well as more radical leftist stances on welfare reform and the hope to abolish the senate and expand the massive universal health care system that Canada already has in place. The only footage I have seen of Tom Mulcair, the head of the NDP, is a video clip of him at an NDP rally in which he lists off words ending in “care,” like “medicare, healthcare, mall care” with brief three-second pauses in between each word and absolutely no context, laughing with the crowd after “mall care,” which I guess must have been a punchline I would have understood if I were Canadian.The Liberal Party of Canada is technically the middle of the three. While still leaning quite to the left of the general political spectrum, they are most easily comparable to the American Democratic Party. Like the U.S. Democrats, the Canadian liberals want to cut taxes for the middle class and increase taxation on the wealthy. In addition, the Canadian liberals want to limit greenhouse gas emissions, spend billions on infrastructure repairs and rebuilding, take in thousands of syrian refugees and spend around $100 million on their processing and care within the country. The head of the Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau, also has very strong views in favor of the pro-choice movement as well as the legalization of marijuana. Trudeau is the son of former Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau, who served in the late 60s, 70s and 80s and was renowned not only for the charisma that his son Justin shares, but his intelligence which according to many reporters is where Justin falls short.The Conservative Party of Canada is the furthest to the right of the three parties and is semi-comparable to the American Republican party on some issues; however, the Canadians fall even further to the right than the GOP on other issues. Although under the party leader and incumbent prime minister Stephen Harper’s term the country came out of a recession strong and has maintained the lowest debt to GDP ratio of all of the G7 countries, Harper has questionable extreme stances on certain issues such as being against some aspects of the extension of freedom of religion to Canadians practicing Islam and being wildly against the decriminalization of marijuana. On top of this, John Oliver points out in a recent segment regarding the election, Stephen Harper has a terrible, terrible band in which he plays keyboard. I have seen fewer than ten seconds of his band absolutely murdering “Sweet Caroline,” and it made me dislike Stephen Harper immensely while knowing next to nothing about his politics.Apart from the handful of Canadian Exonians and the even fewer of you who are absurdly politically involved, essentially nobody on campus knew about the election, much less was talking about it. Regardless of the information I just shared with you all, I am not even remotely qualified to be saying much about the election—I still don’t know that much about it, its candidates or their policies. Most of what I know comes from my loose following of the less than three-month-long campaign, the past few days of research, each of the candidates Wikipedia pages and a fifteen minute clip from “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” And although online research can give you a relatively solid idea of the general election, discussion is what not only sparks interest, but also what allows you to formulate proper opinions. I’m not asking that we take time out of a class to learn about and Harkness the Canadian political system and its functionality in the 2015 federal election, but the fact that I have heard essentially nothing on campus about a massive election regarding the head of the government of not only our neighboring country, but our largest trade partner, is ridiculous. I am honestly having trouble formulating a proper opinion on the election and its outcome. Although I’d like you all to come off of reading this article wanting to inquire more about the Canadian federal election, I know it’s unrealistic, so I’ll ruin the surprise and tell you Trudeau and his moderate liberals emerged victorious, holding 220 seats in parliament with their leader at the head of it all.Trudeau seems only to be in politics because of his father. Although I respect some of his social policies, I see no aspect of his resume that qualifies him as a fiscal leader, but, in all honesty, it could be due to my lack of knowledge on the subject. John Oliver also points out that his Google search is plastered not only with horrifying photos of past fashion choices, but an absurd video of him describing one of his best party tricks: pretending to accidentally fall down a flight of stairs when in reality...wait for it...he actually throws himself down a flight of stairs.  Although he’s no Rob Ford (remember that time when we all briefly cared about Canada because the Mayor of Toronto was on crack and making us all feel good about our life decisions), willingly throwing yourself down a flight doesn’t necessarily scream “I’m fit to be your Prime Minister.” Although I’m crossing my fingers for Canada, it would be nice to know what’s going on with their politics even when a figure head isn’t smoking crack, so although it may be taken with less than a grain of salt, I encourage everyone to get involved in politics domestic and foreign. Look stuff up, ask questions, formulate opinions, understand how these things affect you and how they affect other people because although we all get caught up in the demands of our academic curriculum, it’s worthless if we can’t apply our will to understand and debate to real-world current events.