Canadian Challenge: Canadian Election Debate, or American Vice-Presidential Debate?
Canadian political junkies are all busy programming their VCRs, Tivos, or getting all set up to Bittorrent tonight. Thanks to the vagaries of the Parliamentary process, there is a Canadian election called for October 14th. And, similar to the Presidential debates that have been, and will be happening, the leaders of Canada’s five major parties:
- Conservatives,
- Liberals,
- NDP,
- Bloc Québécois, and
- Green
are participating in back to back French and English language debates (you can read coverage of the debates here). For those readers who are wondering, Canada is officially bilingual, and therefore the major party leaders have a debate in each official language prior to the election.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, tonight dear readers, is the Canadian English language debate. And, unless you have been living under a rock (hello there!), you’re probably aware that tonight is also the American Vice-Presidential debate. With the recent critical media coverage of Sarah Palin, tonight’s Vice-Presidential debate holds a considerable amount of interest not only to Americans, but also to Canadians, if for no other reason than that the U.S. is Canada’s largest trading partner.
As a result, we Canadians are stuck. Either masterful channel surfing, taping one (and praying that you don’t hear about it from friends), or just missing a debate are our choices. Wish all of us Canadian political junkies luck, and goodspeed.
Photo Credit: Put-In-Bay by gobucks2 from the Flickr Media Commons
