I rarely refer to Canada in my musings. Not that I’m not fond of the place, but it never really generates or inspires any great passion.
It’s the ‘Land of the Bland’ where people might distrust or even dislike, but rarely hate, at least in the grand scheme of things.
So early this year they finally swapped a scandal ridden Liberal government for a colourless Conservative government.
Nothing much has changed, a strong economy, built on the back of low wages is still strong, the wages still low.
Minor crisis come and go, but pale in comparison to other similar countries.
Ipsos Reid just released a new poll today which shows the minority dropping around 4%. It was a quantitative survey, and relatively uninteresting.
In lieu of any obvious reason for the fall I-R cited the situation in the Middle East for a ripple of dissatisfaction. They could be right, as explained; the economics don’t provide any startling reasons.
The Liberals, in the process of selecting a new leader, have barely made a blip on the radar, so it wasn’t their effort.
All I can say is, ‘eat your heart out world’, and I think it must be time for a nap.
4 comments:
As you say, cartledge, sometimes there's something to be said for a lack of excitement. What's the old joke about cursing somebody by saying "May you live in interesting times"? interesting times aren't alway the best times live. After all, the French Revolution, the Great Depression and the Crusades were interesting times, but I'm glad I didn't live in them!
Oh, did I really say that? Ok, probably, but without access to a more robust kind of politics my whole system would break down here. I guess I am a child of ‘interesting times’ and political conflict.
But I really think there is a great study in why our various ‘immigrant’ countries, with the same basic stock, have such a vastly different outlook.
I can only guess that the US prefers a bland neighbor as a buffer and Canadians suffer insecurity from having a powerful and feisty neighbor.
And my new beta MS Word changes all spelling to American and hasn’t got other user dictionaries yet! You see, I’m from a culture that thumbs it’s nose at power and always pulls in its own direction, except for sycophantic leaders that is.
How did you get to Canada from Australia, cartledge? My girlfriend and I actually thought about doing moving to Canada for a while after the 2004 election (we even looked into what we would need to do to get hired as teachers there) but eventually decided against it.
It is a long story, involves love and I'm not sure how long it will sustain :) It does help to be a philosopher with a wandering spirit.
Teachers are generally quickly accepted in most commonwealth countries, including Canada and Australia; unlike your average scribe. The best part is that teaching is fairly strongly unionized.
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