Wow, I am im-pressed. Seriously, I did not think you had it in you.
I mean, I knew y'all were sneaky, but this? Is really, really super sneaky.
Oh, don't act so coy - I know you paid off Michael Ignatieff into trying to force an election just so you could get me to move back to Canada.
Yeah, I'll admit I was pretty angry last year when I discovered I wasn't allowed to vote in the Canadian election because I wasn't a resident and because I didn't have a planned re-entry date/address to which to return. It definitely gets my goat that, despite being a citizen of the country (of which I am reminded so frequently every time I try to cross the border back into the US), I don't actually have any say in what goes on there.
To be sure, I don't live there right now. But people I love do. People whose lives impact mine do. And maybe I will be back someday - who knows? My right to Canadian universal healthcare should I return is the only thing that allows me to sleep at night, knowing that I'm one pre-existing condition away from having zero coverage down here.
And I am certainly more than a little perturbed by the logic that says my citizenship is not enough to allow me to vote if I live abroad, but if I lived in Lebanon and found myself the victim of airstrikes, the tax dollars (to which I still contribute, I might add) about which I have no say would be spent rescuing me.
So I can see where y'all would have been thinking that the fires of my rage, not active but still smoldering under the ashes of the past year, would be stoked by another election call in less than a year and that I would be so fed up that I would high-tail it back to Manitoba, hitting the voting booth along the way.
Because.
My friends and family taking up a collection in order to bribe the current leader of the Liberal Party to attempt to force an election less than a year after losing the last one is much, much more plausible than the thought of him calling this election because he thinks he will win.
There's no possible way he's looking at the current political landscape and seeing a road to victory charted anywhere on it. Anyone with eyes can see that this is doomed to failure.
The problem with an election right now, as he surely must know, is that in order to oust the Conservatives, he needs a really big carrot and an even bigger stick:
1) Carrot - a party in such previous disarray as the Liberals needs a charismatic, vibrant, unifying leader who speaks hope and truth and inspires the desire for change (see also: the current president of the United States)
2) Stick - a party with such inertia as the Conservatives will fall only if its leader is so terrible that even its own members want to distance themselves from him, not to mention the undecided (see also: the previous president of the United States)
Ignatieff must surely be aware that he has neither. He is untried, untested. Full of piss and vinegar, to be sure, and doing his best to look like David to Harper's Goliath, but ultimately he hasn't had enough face time nor has he washed away the lingering traces of the Disaster that was Dion from voters still suspicious of whether the Liberal Party has any strength at all right now.
To be sure, he's correct when he says that the current government can't be trusted to deliver its promises, that it's wasting taxpayer dollars, that it's embroiled in petty political fights for the sole purpose of shoring up power.
But this? Equals business as usual in Canadian politics, doesn't matter who's in power.
And constituents, particularly those suffering from the tremendous voter fatigue that infects voters in Canada over the past number of years, need to hate their leader more than they hate going to the polls.
There are lots of people who want Harper gone. But they didn't vote for him last time, either. What Ignatieff needs are the Conservative and NDP votes from last time around. And there simply hasn't been enough time for those people to have enough buyer's remorse to get the numbers he needs out to the polls.
(Of course, Mr. Flip-Flop "I'll back whoever I think will invite me to the 24 Sussex Drive Christmas Party" Layton may have finally lost the last bit of credibility he had, so perhaps the Liberals'll gain a few former-NDPers...)
So, while I admire the lengths to which you've all gone, I really suggest that you very nicely ask for your money back, and give Parliament a bit longer to stew in its own juices. Because, while I'm sincerely flattered, I care too much about Canada to allow such a tremendous gesture on a personal level be so devastating to the Canadian public at large.
Our gift to the kids before we left - a candy-making factory. Who knew sour gummy candies were made entirely of gelatin and citric acid?
Watermelon-flavoured nastiness in molds of various shapes.
The standard plethora of gifts.
Meeting a new friend for the first time.
Taking credit for a group effort (while the other candy architects take some time off from a punching game gone awry)
Reading (reading!!) his new chapter book to great grandpa.
Relaxing with (what else?) Pokemon colouring pages.
Lots of hanging out with the littlekins, which I love. One of the hardest parts about living here is knowing all those babies back home are growing up without frequent and gushing administrations of Taunte-PM-Love. Plus, I want so badly for the special little people in our lives to be more than just pictures on the refrigerator to The Boy and The Girl. So watching the 8 and under set exploring together was simply lovely.
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