Results by Riding. Map by Skyscraper Forum user "Vid." Click to see more

It was only a few years ago that elections in Canada were mostly predictable. For a few solid years, we could bet on Liberals, and some NDP candidates, sweeping the country’s biggest cities. We knew the Conservatives would sweep Alberta, take most of Saskatchewan and dominate much of British Columbia. In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois seemed destined to win the lion’s share of ridings, including a healthy mix of urban and rural areas.

Elections were, for those few years, decided based on pockets of ridings across the country that swung back and forth between, for the most part, Liberals and Conservatives. So when the Liberals had a stranglehold on Ontario during the ‘90s, and benefited from that now defunct divided right, that meant they won government.

But then, slowly, the Conservatives screwed it all up for their rivals. They made those mystical “inroads” into various suburban communities, mid-sized cities and even parts of Quebec. All of a sudden, most of Ontario was voting Conservative, and the Liberals found themselves scrambling to maintain their big city leads. Stephen Harper’s team stopped growing in Quebec, but they managed to win more of the Atlantic, save for Newfoundland and Labrador, and even picked up a few more seats in B.C.

Then the writ dropped in late April of this year. That’s when all the traditional dichotomies fell apart. Suddenly, cities weren’t voting Liberal at all, with a very few exceptions. And Quebec wasn’t voting for the Bloc. High-profile MPs from across party lines—foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon, prominent Liberals Martha Hall-Findlay and Glen Pearson, and virtually every Bloc MP—fell by the wayside. Oh, as did Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe, both of whom were supposed to at least save their own bacon.

Indeed, the 41st parliament’s electoral map looks a little strange. The NDP’s roots were in rural Saskatchewan, and decades of elections helped carve out an urban base, but all of a sudden the party has an enormous, if unstable, Quebec wing. The Conservatives don’t remember what it’s like to have an MP in Toronto, but now they have several in the biggest city going. And the Liberals, who might have at least counted on popular MPs winning based on reputation, are now much lonelier in parliament.

What does all this mean? The next time the country heads to the federal polls, it means parties will have to fight campaigns in some hugely unfamiliar territory. Save for the Conservatives out west, parties can’t rely on many traditional strongholds. The urban vote is split, as is the rural vote. Barring an unprecedented resurrection, Quebec voters will have only federalists to elect.

And further, many popular incumbents aren’t safe. On May 2, 47 percent of MPs won a majority of votes in their riding. Traditionally, those might be considered safe seats. But as Alice Funke of punditsguide.ca points out, a large margin of victory in one election doesn’t guarantee any victory at all in the next election. Her stats suggest that 35 seats that weren’t very close in 2008—that is, where the winner had at least 20 percent on the second-place candidate—changed hands this time around.

As exciting and, eventually, unpredictable as this year’s election turned out to be, it really just laid the groundwork for the next trip to the polls. Whenever that happens, we’ll find out whether or not this redrawn electoral map is for real—or a historical footnote. The only thing that’s certain is that it would be silly to guess what will happen next.

This week the Green Party launched an anti-attack ad criticizing other parties for their sensational advertisements. The meta attack ad aims to benefit from Canadians’ supposed distaste for ad hominem vilification and mudslinging.

It’s commonly believed that the first attack ad was the iconic 1964 “Daisy Girl” commericial, which threatens American voters with the prospect of nuclear war (another long-held American political tradition). Attack ads returned in 1988 with the George HW Bush “revolving door” spot suggesting a candidate’s prison reforms led to an increase in violent crime.

That same year featured Canada’s NAFTA election, in which the Liberal party ran ads suggesting Canadian sovereignty was at stake. You can read about it in a CBC interactive feature documenting 10 prominent attack ads from the English-speaking world.

A 1993 Kim Campbell ad mocked Jean Chretien’s facial Bell’s palsy. Political figures decried the ad as “political desperation” and “totally inappropriate and in poor taste.” It’s a shame the same terms apply to today’s political discourse.

Conservative Senator Doug Finley, a “genius of political attack ads,” was interviewed by the Globe and Mail last month. Responding to those who believe negative ads turn off voters, his response: “Politics is an adversarial business. Kellogg’s doesn’t make their money by telling everybody General Foods are a great product.”

There’s little consensus on the effectiveness of attack ads. A 2007 psychological study suggests that although negative political ads make us want to turn away, we remember their negative messages. Some studies suggest negative and positive ads both have the same effectiveness.

Attack ads have made a lot of inroads south of the border. A study of the 2008 US presidential campaigns found that almost all McCain ads were “negative,” with many focusing on Obama’s personality over his politics. It’s gotten to the point where the hilarious “demon sheep” ad was actually used to sway voters, before it went viral and generated a spinoff.

In the past five years, attack ads have gained worldwide prominence.

An ad from the 2006 Mexican election compares one candidate with Hugo Chavez. Australia, a country with some really broken political discourse, saw the rise of attack ads in last year’s national election — including one monumentally stupid commercial.

Although such ads remain uncommon in UK elections, there’s been a recent increase in Europhobic ads — the word works for both definitions — attacking EU policy by airing stereotypes of continental neighbours.

TV ads in the 2006 São Paolo mayoral race speculated on a candidate’s supposed homosexuality. The tactic is eerily similar to a homophobic Tamil-language radio ad that aired in Toronto’s recent mayoral election.

The rollin’-in-dough Conservative party financed comparatively civil attack ads with funds allegedly arranged through the now infamous “in and out scandal” (that ironically focused on accountability and transparency). While it’s tempting to pin attack ads on one party or political persuasion, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP take part too.

These ads have repercussions on our democracy as a whole. In the 2008 election, the Conservatives made the daft choice of posting their pooping puffin ad online. The ad itself was intellectually (and otherwise) insulting. But more troubling: the Toronto Star ran a frontpage story about it.

Rick Mercer’s 2009 rant on the issue makes some pretty poignant points (and his parody ads are pretty funny, too). Attacks ads are bad for democracy. Instead of helping us debate serious issues as a society, it creates poisons our discourse with character assassination, the politics of fear, and a culture of sound bites over substance.

“Working people did not cause this crisis … and we won’t pay for it!”

These words were printed in bright red letters on a flyer recently published by the Communist Party of Canada as part of its effort to raise public awareness about the root causes of the global economic crisis. The flyer sat atop a pile of documents at the entrance to the Communist Party’s central office in Toronto, where, for 17 years, Miguel Figueroa has been busily engaged in resisting mass capitalism. The room isn’t big, but it is filled with desks, documents, books and other mementoes. The walls are lined with pictures of Lenin and other legendary communist leaders.

Not far from the CPC’s headquarters, I met a gregarious Figueroa at a Greek restaurant on Danforth Avenue in Greektown, just east of Toronto’s downtown. He’s stepped out for a few seconds when the waitress approaches me and asks if I want something. “No thanks, I’m just waiting for someone,” I reply.

She knows who I’m waiting for: “I think it’s Miguel, yes?” When he returns inside and sits down, another woman coming around to clean the tables recognizes him. “Hi Miguel! How are you?” she asks cheerfully. He’s a regular.

It’s not just his neighbourhood restaurant: Figueroa is also a regular in Canadian left-wing politics. He has been leader of the Communist party for 17 years. Since 1992, in fact—which makes him the longest-standing active federal party leader in Canada. None of the leaders for the four parties represented in Parliament even come close to that; Michael Ignatieff has been leading the Liberals since 2008, Stephen Harper the Conservatives since 2004, Jack Layton the NDP since 2003. Even Gilles Duceppe, who seems to have been at the helm of the Bloc Québécois for an eternity, has only been in charge since 1997. To put things in perspective, the Conservative party has had eight different leaders since 1992, and the Liberal party five.

Figueroa says he’s held on for all this time mostly because the hectic job requires it, and because, well, somebody has to do it. “We have many people in our party who are much more capable than I am, but who aren’t in a position to work for the party full-time,” he says.

His term as leader only represents the second half of Figueroa’s career as a member of the CPC. Before being elected head of the party, he spent some 15 years working for the Communists in various capacities at both ends of the country. He became a party organizer in Vancouver in 1978 and moved to Halifax in 1986, where he led the Atlantic branch of the party. In total, the 57-year-old Figueroa has devoted more than 30 years of his life to further build a party in which— despite public support for communism and socialism that is weak at the best of times—he still believes.

And he might have reason to. After all of the hardships his party has endured through the years, the Communist Party of Canada is still alive, which is an achievement in itself. It was formed in 1921 in a barn near Guelph, Ontario. It didn’t take long for the RCMP to target the party and start harassing it, even arresting its leaders in 1931. Nonetheless, several members of the CPC were elected to municipal and provincial offices in the following years. But in 1940, the party was banned because it opposed the country’s participation in the Second World War, and hundreds of its members were imprisoned.

Ironically, the subsequent years were those during which the Communists’ popularity peaked. The party resurfaced as the “Labour-Progressive Party” and, according to former party leader George Hewison, had about 25,000 members after the war. One of them, Fred Rose, was even elected to the House of Commons when he represented the party in the Montreal riding of Cartier in the 1943 federal by-election. But after Soviet Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev exposed the cruelty of Joseph Stalin and his regime in 1956 in the USSR, disenchanted communists around the world left their respective parties. The Communist party was no different, and its membership dwindled until the fall of communism in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991.

Then all hell broke loose.

It was December, 1992. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CPC held a watershed convention. The year before, the party had split along ideological lines: one group, led by General Secretary George Hewison, sought to shift the party’s philosophy from Marxism-Leninism to social democracy, while a faction led by Figueroa opposed the change. Eleven opponents were expelled from the party with Figueroa resigning in sympathy. Figueroa and his group subsequently threatened court action against Hewison and his colleagues to challenge the dismissal. The two sides reached an out-of-court settlement, and at the 1992 convention, a new central committee was elected, with Figueroa at the head of a fractured party in need of serious repair.

Figueroa’s political ascent was unlikely: The Montrealborn Figueroa was not a part of a political family such as the Trudeaus or Martins. He spent a few years in the United States as a child and, after his parents separated, he and his mother moved back to Quebec when he was beginning Grade 9. “We were on welfare,” he says. “The bailiffs actually came to our apartment. They broke down the door with a sledgehammer, came in and confiscated all of our belongings because my mother couldn’t pay some of the bills. They left us with our clothes, our books, and our beds. It was very humiliating for my mother, devastating for her.” This was in 1969 or 1970, he says, an era when an officer could simply show up at a nonpayer’s home and “clean up the house.” “It wasn’t as if it was a decision of the court or she was called to court and didn’t show up. It was draconian.” It was his political awakening.

The incident drove him to get involved in Montreal’s antipoverty movement, where he met lefties, went to meetings, and read the classics of Marxist literature and theory. After leaving Quebec, he joined the National Union of Students (now known as the Canadian Federation of Students) and became interested in the Communist Party. He liked its approach, the fact that it was trying to build unity, working with unions and community organizations, rather than just shouting slogans. But the CPC was also pro-Soviet at the time, a position that placed it in the political wilderness as American rhetoric about the “Evil Empire” was in the ascent. In American schools, says Figueroa, pupils were taught “in Russia, the KGB can come in at three in the morning and take your toys! And there’s nothing scarier to a kid than having their toys taken. It’s dramatic!” But he agreed with most of the party’s program and, defying the anti-communist fog, decided to take out a membership. He hasn’t looked back since.

Even those who once disagreed with Figueroa acknowledge he is an impressive organizer. George Hewison—once Figueroa’s courtroom opponent over the party split— tells me that Figueroa is “very talented, very intelligent.” Johan Boyden, General Secretary of the Young Communist League of Canada, says that Figueroa is “very dedicated.” I started to understand why Figueroa commands such respect when he elaborated on socialist theories and history. To most people, and even by its very nature, communism is associated with working-class struggle and the uprising of the proletariat. Although Figueroa was never an aristocrat, his political education didn’t exactly happen at the bottom of a coal mine: After completing his pre-university studies in arts and science at Dawson College in Montreal and taking courses in urban studies and economics at McGill and Concordia universities, he spent six months studying political economy at the Lenin Institute in Moscow in 1985-86, where Hewison was one of his classmates. Figueroa then returned to the classroom in the early 1990s to start his graduate studies in international development at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. He never completed his thesis though, because, among other things, he was elected Communist Party Leader.

The first order of business was whipping the party into shape for an election, and, in the process, Figueroa ended up reshaping Canadian elections themselves. The Communists were struggling to register the minimum of 50 candidates required under the Canada Elections Act to get official party status and participate in the 1993 federal election. This meant that the Communist Party would not be on the ballots, and that Elections Canada would also deregister the party and seize its assets. Figueroa challenged the provision on the basis it discriminated against smaller political parties. He pursued the suit for six years, and in 1999, Justice Anne Molloy of the Ontario Court ruled that the 50-candidate threshold was, according to official documents, “inconsistent with the right of each citizen to run for office” and ordered that it be reduced to two candidates.

The Attorney General’s office appealed the decision, and the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the threshold was indeed constitutional, although parties that could field at least 12 candidates for an election would be able to have their party’s name on the ballot next to the candidate’s name. Not content with the halfway measure, Figueroa appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, claiming the rule violated Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The hearing started in November 2002, and in June 2003, the historic Figueroa v. Canada (Attorney General) decision determined that “the 50-candidate threshold is inconsistent with the right of each citizen to play a meaningful role in the electoral process.” Ten years after his party was deregistered, Figueroa had successfully forced Elections Canada to overturn its rule and the Communist Party of Canada was back on the ballot.

Being on the ballot is one thing; winning is another, and the Communist Party remains a distant also-ran when it comes to actually delivering votes. During the CPC’s decade of oblivion, Figueroa remained active on the political scene by running twice as an independent candidate in the Canadian federal election. In 1993, in the riding of Parkdale-High Park, he finished ninth out of 11 candidates; in 1997 in Toronto’s Davenport riding, he finished seventh out of eight.

Though it still barely registers on the electoral scale, the Communist Party’s Supreme Court fight remains a historic win, and not just for Figueroa and the party.

“It established new grounds in evaluating election law,” says Peter Rosenthal, the CPC’s lawyer at the time. Rosenthal has worked on a number of cases related to electoral law, but believes this one spawned several others and had positive consequences for small parties. Nelson Wiseman, associate professor with the department of political science at the University of Toronto, had originally predicted there would be a proliferation of parties following the Supreme Court’s decision. “But the government has tightened up the requirements for registering a party,” he says, noting the number of registered federal parties is not much higher today than it was in 2003: among other things, the number of members required for party registration was increased from 100 to 250, and each party must have three other officers in addition to its leader.

But while new parties haven’t exactly mushroomed since Figueroa v. Canada, some existing ones have been able to survive. “My hero!” exclaims Blair T. Longley upon hearing Figueroa’s name. The Marijuana Party of Canada leader, whose party has been decimated in recent years due to several of its members joining more prominent parties, admits “We wouldn’t exist without Miguel Figueroa and Peter Rosenthal’s work. None of the small parties would exist.” Indeed, several of those parties rallied behind Figueroa during the court challenge, and the case made for strange bedfellows: in addition to the Marijuana Party, the right-wing Christian Heritage Party—which couldn’t meet the 50-candidate threshold for the 2000 election—joined in. Pastors associated with the party even asked their congregations at Sunday church services to pray for Figueroa while the case was being debated.

“This is a landmark case in the status of small parties,” says Boyden. “It’s a great advancement for democracy in Canada because it recognized that there was a role for those parties…. The Green Party, which is now much larger than it was back then, was right there at the table in the Figueroa case,” he says.

In addition to his work as party leader, Figueroa is an editorial board member of the People’s Voice, the nationally distributed bi-monthly newspaper published by the CPC. But in spite of the party’s rebirth, publications and political involvement, Figueroa is still leading a small party that only represents half of the Communist left in Canada, the other being the similarly (perhaps confusingly) named, but ideologically different, Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). Moreover, the Communist Party currently has approximately 500 members coast to coast. Nevertheless, Figueroa’s party is a bit like one of those inflatable bop bags that always get back up after being knocked down; it simply refuses to give up and go away. No matter how hard the government, the RCMP or Elections Canada has tried to kick it off the political scene, the Communists have always found a way to return. Figueroa is simply the architect of the latest rebuilding, which, even after 17 years, hardly threatens to overturn the decades-long status quo of Liberal or Conservative rule. But like its leader, the Communist Party of Canada is a regular, a fixture on the scene, not the flashiest customer but a reliable one. And like Figueroa, it intends to stay that way.

Michael Ignatieff greeting listeners at a speech on the environment at Laval University, November 26, 2009. Creative Commons Photo by Robert J. Galbraith

Holy déjà vu, Iggy.

Is it just me, or is this whole post-prorogue budget announcement that the NDP and Bloc aren’t supporting feeling eerily familiar?

Rewind to November 2008. Stephen Harper prorogued the government to avoid a non-confidence motion brought on by the New Democrats and Liberals. This move bought him a little time, and as Dion stepped down as leader and Ignatieff stepped up, it put the new Liberal leader in a rather powerful position. The whole country looked to him to see what move he would make—maintain the coalition, or approve a Conservative budget?

Typically, we expect the party leading the country to hold the most power, but at moments like these it becomes apparent that the opposing parties are well-positioned to get some things done, leader of the country or not.

When the budget, and avoiding a non-confidence motion, hinged last year on Liberal approval, the Conservatives made room in their plan for some modest alterations Ignatieff insisted upon. Top of mind was the recession, and the creation of a strong stimulus package.

This year, why not leverage this power once again, Iggy? Last time around recession was the issue du jour, and certainly stimulating the economy is always a smart move, but that isn’t the only issue that Canadians feel strongly about—some uncertainty around climate change has settled in, but a majority of Canadians still believe that it is a very serious issue.

This year, Ignatieff could leverage his power and suggest changes to the budget that would increase jobs, stimulate the economy, and begin to lay the tracks for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.  My suggestions? Start modestly, but with policies that will lay the foundation for further climate change policies in the future.

• Introduce a strong transit plan with emphasis on effective public transit routes;

• Create a regulation or carbon price that would reduce total industrial emissions by 3% annually; and

• Make a national investment in renewable energy, green manufacturing and electric vehicles.

All of these strategies require job creation, and will cultivate a new “blue/green” economy. Of course, for this to be an effective political move as well as climate change reduction strategy, it will require that all parties get on board, which is why incremental change will have to be where we start for now.

So go ahead, Ignatieff,  force Harper’s hand into a new green economy. Afterall, this opportunity seems to come but once a year—you should make good use of it.

We’ve marched, oh how we have marched.

The “get back to work” signs now find their place in the closet where dust has begun to flirt with the climate-themed “350” signs of October and December. The proroguing of Parliament has left the country with no ability to act on any sort of climate legislation (though that’s not so different than when it’s in session). We also now have the launch of a popular movement for democracy, based partly on a collective desire to deal with a whole raft of issues, the climate crisis being one.

A failure of international politics in Copenhagen and of democracy domestically has left a situation that is indeed bleak, though also provides time for activists, and all active citizens, to regroup. Journalist Murray Dobbin wrote last week: “These politically opportune moments do not arrive very often and it is incumbent upon existing organizations to rise to the occasion, support the nascent movement and begin gearing up their own machinery to take the fight to Stephen Harper and his government.”

We now have an election coming up—if not April, then at some point soon. But are we really that serious about firing Steve, as many rally signs had proclaimed?

Dobbin continues to ask if this democracy movement is about reform in itself or will it include the specific goal of ridding Canada of its current Prime Minister?

The big elephant in the movement is the political siloing of the non-Conservative activists. Diversity of voice often brings strength, but a split of support because of the partisanship of most of us in the movement continues to pose a problem within Canada’s electoral system.

The Conservatives’ drop in the polls due to shutting down Parliament and the prisoner abuse scandal has been sharp and pronounced. While without much in the way of advertised policy, the Liberals have managed an upswing in support, with the NDP, Greens and Bloc all down slightly in the New Year. The now two-party race for government is something to keep more than an eye on.

While progressives are split within many parties, the weakness in civil society institutions and movement organizations is also harming the cause. The environmental movement itself within Canada seems to have more and more organizations working on similar climate ends, and there even exists more than one coalition/umbrella type group that focuses on federal climate lobbying: Power Up Canada, Climate Action Network, Power Shift, and so on.

Perhaps this can be used to advantage. Three main strategies present themselves to guide us to the ultimate aim of reducing climate change emissions immediately and in the long-run.

• Some organizations may wish to stick it out, putting continued pressure and policy work on the international negotiating system leading to Copenhagen 2: Mexico City.
• Others must work on focused action that directs the removal of high-carbon sources to our atmosphere like coal plants, tar sands projects and industrial projects, which could reduce emissions quickly and may influence positive actions in other countries.
• The remaining organizations can concentrate on lobbying and coalition-building that focuses MPs and political parties to bring the climate agenda far forward in preparation for legislative debate and the next election.

Organizations working on these three objectives should be ready to support each others’ goals, each with a focus that could bring results – a multi-pronged strategy that may well bring success in at least one area.

We have a unique opportunity.It is largely up to the size and tact of citizens movements whether we let the government keep pushing the climate around or we push the agenda over the top.

Follow Stop Everything’s climate, political and action updates at: http://twitter.com/stop_everything

Part of Barack Obama’s victory came on the back of a grassroots campaign that effectively used the internet to collect supporters and funds. Among social-media-savvy politicians, the president is The Man. While Obama might be down with the kids today, have any Canadian leaders managed to cash in on the social-media cachet? Or is Twitter anathema to politicians raised on lawn signs and pancake breakfasts?

[some figures have been updated since November 2008 publication]

Stephen Harper

Presence: Harper has accounts on Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, FriendFeed, Facebook, and even MySpace. Besting the other leaders, he has over 42,600 Twitter followers and 29,300 Facebook fans, where his third-person profile proclaims he is a curling fan. The Conservatives have even ventured into an attempt at viral marketing with their Ignatieff.me attack website.

FAIL or FTW? Harper’s tweets, which typically begin with words like “Statement,” “Visited,” and “Announced,” sound like stodgy, third-person press releases. Is Harper a man? Is he a machine? Are his tweets being written by a Communications dropout from Laurier? All we know is that they are vaguely reminiscent of headlines that appear on the fronts of government-owned newspapers in tinpot dictatorships.

Typical Tweet: Visited construction site of Queenston-Lewiston Bridge project.

Michael Ignatieff

Presence: More than 28,700 Facebook fans are privy to Ignatieff’s reading habits, which include Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, and the essays of Isaiah Berlin, and he has over 34,300 Twitter followers. IggyTube, his YouTube channel, features dozens of videos—though most have fewer than 1,000 views.

FAIL or FTW? Although more comfortable with bandying “I” than Harper, Ignatieff’s self-conscious use of “we” to denote his real, actual Canadianness undermines the effort. His Twitter feed is also short on interaction with real, actual Canadians.

Typical Tweet: In the birthplace of our nation’: It was in Gaspe that we first became Canadian #lpc

Jack Layton

Presence: Layton has adopted Flickr and FriendFeed accounts and has over 32,600 followers on Twitter, despite the background being that eye-burning hue of NDP orange. His Facebook page has more than 27,700 supporters. There, he says his favourite movie is Star Wars.

FAIL or FTW? Layton’s Twitter account is the office equivalent of the chirpy guy who comes in on a hungover Monday morning, praising the latest sales targets and joshing with the boss while trying to steal his job. The leader’s over-caffeinated updates often include Twitpics of him posing with the common folk.

Typical Tweet: Obama got it … New Democrats get it; working together we can win from the ground up.

Elizabeth May

Presence: May can be found on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter with 6,100 followers, and Facebook with 6,400 supporters. She uses Facebook Notes to blog about topics like media speculation on the upcoming election.

FAIL or FTW? If you ask May a question on Twitter, she will probably respond to you.

Typical Tweet: @intuitiveartist aside from storing it in the garage … trying to reduce the amount of packaged goods you purchase is a good way to go.

Gilles Duceppe

Presence: In addition to maintaining a “blogue” at blogue. blocquebecois.org, Duceppe can be found on Twitter and Facebook, where he’s acquired a following of around 23,000 followers and 3,900 fans, respectively.

FAIL or FTW? While most leaders make an effort to use French and English, Duceppe is French-only, perhaps explaining why he has a social media following on par with an infrequently updating English-Canadian blogger.

Typical Tweet: Au Delta à Trois-Rivières ce matin pour une nouvelle journée de tournée en Mauricie

The almost-bare shelves of Toronto's Pages Bookstore in its final days. Daniel Tencer writes about the plight of independent booksellers in the November-December issue of This Magazine.

The November-December 2009 issue of This Magazine is now snaking its way through the postal system, and subscribers should find it in their mailboxes any day now. We expect it to be available on newsstands next week, probably. (Remember, subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too.) We’ll start posting articles from the issue online next week. We suggest subscribing to our RSS feed to ensure you never miss a new article going online, following us on Twitter or becoming a fan on Facebook for updates, new articles and other sweet, sweet This action.

This issue is our annual mega-hyper-awesome edition (64 pages instead of 48!), as we bring you a special supplement with the winners of the 2009 Great Canadian Literary Hunt.The winners this year were:

On the cover this month is a special package of articles we call Legalize Everything! — five writers tackle five things that should be legalized, and the activists who are fighting to make that a reality. Katie Addleman witnesses the madness of the drug trade, and the misbegotten “war on drugs” that criminalizes the mentally ill, funnels billions of black-market dollars into the pockets of narcoterrorists, and never actually reduces drug use. Tim Falconer asks our politicians to legalize physician-assisted suicide and allow Canadians to die on their own terms. Jordan Heath Rawlings meets the artists who believe that online music sharing may actually be the future of their industry, not its end. Laura Kusisto says criminalizing hate speech erodes Canadian democracy and offers no meaningful protection for minorities. And Rosemary Counter hunts down the outlaw milk farmer who wants all Canadians to have the right to enjoy unpasteurized milk, even if he has to go all the way to the supreme court to do it.

Elsewhere in the magazine, Meena Nallainathan surveys the state of Canada’s Tamil community following the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam last spring, and meets four Tamil activists who may hold some answers for rebuilding a Sri Lankan nation tormented by decades of civil war.

All that, plus James Loney on the Canadian government’s attitudes towards its citizens trapped abroad; Bruce M. Hicks on what Canada’s new Mexican and Czech visa restrictions are really about; Paul McLaughlin interviews B.C.’s Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, on the eve of his American incarceration; Dorothy Woodend on a new crop of documentaries that dissect the workings of our capitalist world; Darryl Whetter gives his picks for the must-reads of the first decade of the 21st century; Navneet Alang warns that when it comes to online charity, sometimes clicking isn’t enough; Lisa Charleyboy profiles Nadya Kwandibens and her photographic exploration of the urban Aboriginal experience, “Concrete Indians”; Aaron Cain sends a postcard from San Salvador, after a chilling meeting with some right-wing politicians on the verge of a losing election; and Jen Gerson ranks Canada’s political leaders on their Facebook and Twitter savvy.

PLUS: Daniel Tencer on the plight of independent bookstores; Sukaina Hirji on Vancouver’s Insite safe injection clinic; Lindsay Kneteman on Alberta’s Democratic Renewal Project; Melissa Wilson on getting the flu shot; Graham F. Scott on Canada’s losing war in Afghanistan; Jorge Antonio Vallejos on a remembrance campaign for Canada’s missing Aboriginal women; Jennifer Moore on an Ecuadorian village that’s suing the Toronto Stock Exchange; Cameron Tulk on Night, a new play about Canada’s far north; Andrea Grassi reviews Dr. Bonnie Henry’s Soap and Water & Common Sense; and Ellen Russell on Canadian workers’ shrinking wages.