The eerie thing is that the results don’t differ too drastically. There’s still a Conservative minority and there’s still a disproportionate number of seats for certain parties, further illustrating the problems with a “first-past-the-post” electoral system. But in the alternate reality results, the NDP and the Green Party have, collectively, the same number of seats as the Tories, giving them the opportunity to exert some serious pull when it comes to the environmental and social issues that Harper has been ignoring.
We might have gotten our arts funding back.
On the other hand, there’s also the fact that, as a friend of mine pointed out, many students aren’t as properly educated about party platforms as they should be in order to vote. I’d go on to say, however, that many (most?) adults wouldn’t know where to find platforms even if they wanted to read them. Who knows what would have happened if every vote came from an individual (child or adult) that was fully educated on each issue. A Green Party majority? Probably not, but given the embarrassing voter (59 percent!) turnout this election, we’ll probably never know.
But, there is at least one shining hope for any future Canadian elections. Four times more schools participated in Student Vote this year than during the 2006 election, totalling about 400,000 students. Educated or not, this means the potential for four times more students graduating with a yearning to vote than in years past.
As a relative youngin myself, I’m still waiting for the day when the youth of Canada shed their bad rap and actually give a crap about who’s running their country. Maybe next time.
In the meantime, if you’re unhappy with the turn your riding took this election, why not check out who might have been elected had you handed the power off to a bunch of kids. If you’re living in Central Nova, you’d have said goodbye to Peter McKay, as Elizabeth May took the seat in a landslide. If you’re living in my home riding of Toronto Centre, you’d be be cozying up with Johan Boyden of the Communist Party of Canada.

1. It didn’t produce a strikingly different parliament and we could have all saved ourselves the time and money;
2. None of the parties experienced much of a victory or a defeat;
3. It was kind of dull.

Which isn’t much to show for five weeks of campaigning. Especially considering that it had the potential to be one of the most ideologically heated elections in decades. Between worldwide economic collapse, an unprecedented electoral preoccupation with hot-potato arts funding, the entry of the Green Party into the debates and the Liberal party’s choice to campaign on its dud “green shift” platform, and the ballooning cost of the Afghan war, there was plenty of material over which the parties could engage meaningfully.
Instead we got jokes about sweater vests and animated shitting puffins. We all responded with a resounding yawn: the number of eligible voters who actually bothered to go to the ballot box plunged to a new low of just 58 percent.
The electorate’s apathy in this election could be chalked up to any number of things: uninspiring leaders, boredom with the same old platforms and policies, exhaustion after several years of minority governments and frequent elections, dissatisfaction with the First-Past-The-Post system, and so on. That last point is the one that, for me and many others, emerged as the theme of this election.
Our parliamentary representation is divorced from reality. That became very clear as the numbers rolled in yesterday. The Bloc Québecois received less than 10 percent of the popular vote and gets 50 seats; the Green party receives almost seven percent of the popular vote and receives none. The NDP receives almost twice as many votes as the Bloc but ends up with a third as many seats.
If this was a method of choosing contestants on Canadian Idol, it would be denounced as corrupt and quickly scrapped, but apparently it’s just fine for choosing the government of our fine dominion.
The frustration that hundreds of thousands of Canadians feel about this is obvious: the vote-swapping groups on Facebook and the strategic voting sites like voteforenvironment.ca and anyonebutharper.ca are symptoms of a deeper dissatisfaction with how this country is governed. Millions of votes are ignored under this system, and it disenfranchises people who actually take the time to vote — a dwindling population, and no wonder.
Proportional representation works in dozens of modern democracies around the world. It’s time for Canada’s election system to grow up and adopt a PR electoral system. This issue cuts to the heart of Canadian democracy, and we should be demanding that it be at the top of every party’s to-do list when the next election rolls around — which, at this rate, could be any minute now.

See the rest of Strombo’s efforts here.

The Bloc Québécois
The Bloc proposes that Ottawa “substantially increase its budget allocations for basic reseach,” and comments on the fact that the Quebec provincial government already provides resources for the fight against AIDS, and suggests that any extra funding provided by Ottawa should be paid directly to the provinces to allow them to strengthen their own health care systems.
The Greens
The Green Party supports increased funding for research on prevention technologies and believes that the costs will pay for themselves in the long run by “reducing reducing long-term treatment costs and improving the productivity of future generations.”
The Liberals
Camp Dion proposes a comprehensive approach that focuses on prevention, care, treatment and provide funding for the research on prevention technologies.
The New Democrats
The NDP insists that “prevention must be the cornerstone of any effective HIV/AIDS strategy” and says that a New Democratic government will ensure that federal support for prevention research is “pegged at the highest priority.”
Really, they’re all saying pretty much the same thing, which is fine. What I am more concerned about is the party that isn’t saying anything at all.