Did Michael Ignatieff's pro-Iraq war stance doom the Liberals? Creative Commons photo by Flickr user WmPitcher.

Listening to Michael Ignatieff address his few remaining dispirited supporters on election night, I couldn’t help but picture the room dotted with the ghosts of Baghdad. I wonder whether Ignatieff saw them too, like so many Banquos’ ghosts in the room that night as he took responsibility for his party’s dismal showing in the 2011 federal election.

Having since resigned his leadership, it may seem to rude to kick him now that he’s down. But the colossal scale of the Liberal defeat in this election can’t be fully understood unless we talk honestly about Michael Ignatieff’s career as an intellectual and politician—and the Iraq War remains central to both.

Ignatieff’s career as a Canadian politician is bound up in the war: he was first courted by backroom Liberals in the spring of 2004, as an iconic “serious” small-L liberal. (American liberalism was entering what would be years of toxic, self-destructive debate about whether “good liberals” could oppose the war.) For this type of centrist liberal, supporting the invasion of Iraq was the “serious” choice, contrasted with the dreamy foolishness of pacifism.

Paul Martin’s government, terrified that the brief moment of spine Jean Chrétien had shown by avoiding direct Canadian involvement in the war, was terrified about the state of relations with the Bush government. Ignatieff’s recruitment was a signal to the Americans and the Canadian elite that the Liberal Party could still be trusted, despite Chrétien’s heresy. It was more about distancing the Liberals from left-wing policies than the war itself.

Ignatieff wasted no time. His landmark speech to the Liberal Party in 2005 was full of rhetorical slaps at the left, but here’s my favourite, in retrospect:

“…many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.”

Last night’s election was extraordinary in more ways than we would have thought possible a few weeks ago. Canadian politics has been shaken up in a serious, permanent way, and this election will be studied for years to come. As we start to digest the result and its consequences, there are some clearly identifiable changes and trends at work:

1. A Majority Conservative Government

This is crashingly obvious, but the 166-seat showing for the Conservative Party last night was more decisive than anyone expected five weeks, or even 24 hours, in advance of the polls. A Harper majority represents a true departure from any Canadian politics of the past; we are in uncharted territory. The loss of the moderating influence of a majority opposition gives the Harper conservatives truly free rein for the first time, and given this government’s conduct as a minority, we should expect a swift and substantial turn to the right. Need an example? Last night, with results still trickling in, Heritage Minister James Moore told the CBC that the government would move right away to abolish public funding for political campaigns. The Conservatives now have both hands firmly on the levers of power, and they are going to move. Fast.

2. The NDP Ascendance

The pollsters predicted a good showing for the NDP, but again, the idea that the New Democrats could take more than 100 seats would have been laughable as recently as a week ago. Yet here we are, Jack Layton bound for Stornoway with 101 NDP MPs at his back. Layton will make a skilled and energetic opposition leader, and will undoubtedly use his bully pulpit to solidify the NDP’s newfound national base. The “Orange Wave” phenomenon is, for many progressives, a silver lining of this election, but the grim irony, as every pundit observed last night, is that Layton has less leverage now as leader of the opposition than he had as leader of the third party in a minority government. This election has to be counted the NDP’s greatest success to date — but still a qualified one.

3. Twilight of the Liberals

There were plenty of factors that led to yesterday’s electoral result, but if you were looking for one doorstep to lay it at, the Liberal Party’s would be the one. Their unprecedentedly poor showing in the polls echoes, in sentiment if not in absolute numbers, the trouncing the Progressive Conservatives received in 1993; the added humiliation of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff losing his own riding, and then failing to resign before resigning anyway, has shaken the party to its roots. Speculation about merging with the NDP is probably premature but no longer an outright joke. Rumours of the Liberal Party’s death are exaggerated; still, even contemplating such a thing would have been unthinkable a year ago. The Liberals pulled the trigger on this election — though, having found the government in contempt of parliament, it’s not clear they could have reasonably chosen otherwise — and their strategists must have felt there was a reason to do so. The fact that they were so terribly wrong is going to prompt plenty of Grit soul-searching.

4. The Smashing of the Bloc

The apocalyptic showing of the Bloc Québécois spells the end of the separatist movement at the federal level; it’s hard to see how it can be otherwise. Reduced from 47 to just four MPs, with their leader defeated in his own riding, and swamped by the NDP in Quebec, the Bloc is over as a parliamentary force. That’s important because the party since 1993 had been a spoiler, changing the electoral calculus necessary to take the House of Commons. That fourth party, wielding many more seats than its popular vote would indicate, had been a keystone of the minority government structure that has prevailed since 2004. Their decimation will change the math for every election to come. What this means for the sovereigntist movement in general is unclear, too — will it dampen the appetite for another referendum, or embolden the Parti Québécois provincially? Again, who knows? We’re off the map here.

5. The Greens Take the Field

As special-interest party the Bloc exits stage left, the election of Elizabeth May as the first Green Party MP ushers in a new parliamentary voice. This was an important symbolic win for May and for the Greens, and perhaps an important substantive win, too. Being the only Green in the house of commons will hardly make May a power broker, but it’s a foothold, and May is known for being an articulate rhetoritician; she’ll make hay from even the sliver of Question Period time this seat grants her. Whether that translates to growth for the Greens remains to be seen, but if that federal election campaign per-vote subsidy is taken away — now a near-certainty — the Greens stand to lose a big chunk of the funding that helped put May in her seat. Have they built a big enough party machine in the last few years (and can they continue to build it for the next four or five) to do it on their own?

6. The Pollsters Are Jokes

The 2008 election was bad enough for the pollsters, who saw their accuracy deteriorate markedly. This time around was even worse. While they all saw the Orange Wave coming, no major pollster predicted the Conservative majority; none grasped the extent of the Liberals’ crashing fortunes, and the utter collapse of the Bloc was barely on their radar. And the media, hungry for numbers, babbled every poll projection regardless. Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star predicted that way back at the beginning of the campaign when she provided a lesson learned from previous campaigns: “All media will declare that they’re going to not report on polls in the same old way and will break that promise by Day 2.” Bingo.

7. Voters Still Aren’t Voting

Turnout increased a bit this election, bobbing back above 60 percent. But electoral participation remains at distressing lows. Some blame our antiquated first-past-the-post system; others disillusionment with partisan incivility; or perhaps it’s that Kids Today don’t vote in elections. Whatever the reason, it’s a discouraging trend, and more discouraging is that there is no indication that most of these factors will improve. Electoral reform is off the table; a Conservative government has no interest in proportional representation. The U.S.-style attack politics that has metastisized in Ottawa will continue; the Conservatives slathered it on thick and were rewarded with a majority, and that lesson will stick. Perhaps younger people can be enticed to the ballot box by a resurgent NDP, which has traditionally enjoyed their support. Yesterday’s slight uptick in turnout could be the start of an upward trend — or it could be a bump on the long slide downhill.

In any case, it looks like we have four to five years of a Conservative government during which we can contemplate all these questions — and many more besides.

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.

Canada's daycare scheme is in disarray. Creative commons photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

Advocates have long argued that a publicly funded universal daycare system would support low-income families, single parents, and working mothers. Support for variants of universal child care was a hallmark of the Mulroney, Chrétien, and Martin election platforms—but none of them made it happen.

Instead, in 2006, the then new Harper government made the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) its first major social policy initiative, paying families $100 per month for each child under six, money intended to support child-care costs. Arguing that they were giving parents more freedom in making child care decisions, the Conservatives’ UCCB was, and remains, a rejection of the very idea of universal daycare. Five years on, the problems with the new system are clear.

The UCCB is “ill conceived and inequitable,” says Ken Battle, President of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. He raises several objections: despite the sound-bite friendly “hundred bucks a month” concept, the UCCB is actually “virtually incomprehensible” to the average citizen. That $100 is considered taxable income, so no family actually gets $1,200 a year. Furthermore, it’s actually harmed lower-income, single-parent families, who no longer receive the annual $249 young child supplement (which was quietly abolished to help pay for the UCCB). Given the complexities and perversity of the tax system, higher-income families actually receive the highest net benefit.

Battle also criticizes the social engineering implied in the UCCB, under which not all families are created equal. Two-parent families with two parents working actually pay more in taxes than two-parent families (with the same total income) with one parent staying home. This is because that extra $1,200 in yearly income is taxable in the hands of whichever parent earns less. In practice, this means the government privileges families with a stay at home parent—and because of weak pay equity regulation, that generally means mom stays home.

These are minor gripes, though, compared to the fact that the math just doesn’t work: with daycare costs often well in excess of $7,000 a year, $1,200 is simply not enough. Battle argues that in order for a system of cash payments to meaningfully reduce poverty and help families, the older Canada Child Tax Benefit would need to be boosted to $5,000 per child per year for low- and middle-income families. Food Banks Canada recommends the same figure as part of its larger argument that a well funded child care plan would be one of the most effective ways to fight hunger and child poverty.

It’s unlikely that the Conservatives will reverse direction, and the federal Liberals have now surrendered the issue, recently dropping their long-standing commitment to universal daycare. In October 2009, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff called universal daycare a “legacy” item for his party: “I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down discussion in this country about social justice,” Ignatieff told the Toronto Star in Februrary 2010. Last October, however, blaming the economic forecast and Conservative spending priorities, Ignatieff announced the Liberals would no longer push for a universal public child care program.

With the feds asleep at the switch, some advocates are hopeful that the provinces will step in. Organizations like the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care point to Quebec’s high-profile $7-a-day daycare system as an example to follow. In the 10 years after its introduction in 1997, the province’s child-poverty rates declined by 50 percent. The program’s problem is that it’s too popular, with a shortage of available spaces and long waiting lists. Though the Conservatives say the UCCB is all about giving families more choice, it now obstructs universal publicly funded child care—the choice that most would like to be able to make.

Before yesterday’s vote by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the message from Canadian government officials was one of cautious optimism. There might be tense moments and flustered diplomats, but Canada had not lost a vote for a Security Council seat in 60 years.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made two big speeches to the UN at the end of September, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon sacrificed his Thanksgiving weekend to stay in New York and bat his eyelashes at other delegates. Besides, we were competing against Germany and Portugal for the two spots available for our region, and, with France and the UK already holding permanent seats on the Security Council, no way the international community would give Europe two more seats. Right?

But it did. Very embarrassing. Our government’s first response, naturally, was to blame Michael Ignatieff. He’d said some mean things about how we maybe didn’t deserve to sit on the Security Council. The other countries must have seen our lack of unity and lost faith in us. Perhaps. Except that CBC’s The National reported last night that most of the foreign delegates it spoke to at the conference didn’t know who Ignatieff was.

There are, of course, many possible explanations. Perhaps the General Assembly remembered that, before this recent show of affection, the PM’s last significant appearance at the UN had been a courtesy call after he was elected in 2006. Perhaps some representatives from Africa were concerned that last year Canada cut eight African countries from its list of priority aid recipients. Perhaps yesterday’s announcement of efforts to strengthen trade with Israel reminded other countries of our no-questions-asked friendship with the right wing of Israeli politics. Perhaps it was the ongoing skirmish with the United Arab Emirates over our unwillingness to exchange extra airline routes for an almost-secret military base.

Or maybe we failed to adequately counter-act the “rotten lying bastards” phenomenon, in which up to a third of the countries which promise to vote for you are really just too shy to say ‘no.’ In the frustratingly polite world of international diplomatic disagreements, all we can be sure of is that we’re not as popular as we thought we were.

UPDATE, Sept. 22, 1:55 pm: CanWest Postmedia reports that C-391 sponsor MP Candice Hoeppner “has all but conceded defeat” and “given up on last-minute lobbying” for today’s vote, and calls the eight liberals and 12 NDPers who voted in favour last time, “turncoats.” She estimates the government is one — one! — vote short, which is why it’s all hands on deck today: Jack Layton told reporters “Everybody will be there unless somebody gets struck by lighting.” The Prime Minister also flew back from New York where he was addressing the UN.

UPDATE, Sept. 22, 3:56 pm: There were questions about the registry during Question period, but seems to be nothing new to add based on that. However, Susan Delacourt just published a surprising and sad story about why Liberal MP Scott Simms, who originally voted to abolish the registry, has changed his mind today: because between the last vote and this one, his father took his own life, and the weapon he used was a long gun. Simms will not be talking about it publicly, but a colleague tweeted the story put the gun registry in “unprecedented perspective” during this morning’s Liberal caucus meeting. Addendum: Barb Adamski replies to us on Twitter that no gun registry is in a position to prevent suicides by a determined person, which it must be conceded is a fair point. However, it does not negate many other good reasons to register guns, and the fact that the story broke today is bound to be significant, no matter how indirect the connection to the vote itself. Addendum to the addendum: Delacourt explains on the Toronto Star blog why they published the story today before the vote.

*****

Today is the day that parliament will vote on bill C-391, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act. This private member’s bill (full text here), introduced by Candice Hoeppner, the Conservative MP for Portage-Lisgar, Manitoba, on May 15, 2009, if passed would bring about the end of the long gun registry, which is one component of the Canadian Firearms Program.

Note that there is a difference between a gun licence and gun registration — the RCMP describes the distinction as being analagous to a driver’s licence and vehicle registration. There are also three classes of firearms that the program regulates: non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited. Ordinary hunting rifles and shotguns have always been “non-restricted” — that is, anyone over 18 can purchase and own them as long as they’re registered and licensed.

Bill C-391 does not affect licensing requirements; the only thing the bill would repeal is the requirement to register a non-restricted firearm — i.e., a rifle used  for hunting game. The reason this distinction is important is because critics of the gun registry have focused on its cost, and they claim that repealing these requirements would save money. This claim, to put it bluntly, doesn’t hold water. The RCMP will continue to run a gun registry; almost all of the expense will continue to be incurred whether Bill C-391 passes or not.

The cost of the long gun registry has been widely misreported, misinterpreted, and deliberately overblown. An RCMP report (completed in February but not given to Parliament until August; it was promptly leaked to the CBC) has placed the cost of the long gun registry portion of the Canadian Firearms Program “in the range of $1.1 and $3.6 million per year.” The “$1 billion” figure that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other Conservative politicians have repeatedly quoted is simply not accurate. According to that same report, according to The Tyee, the $1 billion figure actually refers to the entire cost of the whole Canadian Firearms Program from 1995 to 2007.

The other source of criticism of the long-gun registry is generally perceived to split along urban-rural lines, with many game hunters unhappy at the cost and inconvenience of having to register their firearms. Hoeppner, introducing her bill, claimed that “law-abiding Canadian hunters, farmers and sport shooters … have been treated like criminals” since the introduction of the registry (in its current form) in 2001. As James Laxer noted this week on Rabble, however, the urban-rural break is a red herring. Plenty of people in the country want the registry to continue, particularly rural women. When polled, 47 percent of rural women supported the registry.

The registry’s other important support continues to be police forces themselves, who have unambiguously spoken out in support of the gun registry for years. Toronto’s Chief of Police, Bill Blair, is also president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and testified before parliament on Bill C-391 on May 26, 2010. He was clear on the position of law enforcement on the gun registry — it’s not a panacea, it’s a tool, and a useful one.

Like all of the tools we use, the firearms registry is not a perfect, universally effective tool. Not every criminal will register their weapons. Not everyone will obey the law. It will not deter every criminal nor will it solve every crime. The police never claimed it would.

What we do claim, with the authority that comes from actually using the information contained in the Firearms Registry every day, is that it is a tool that helps us do our job.

[…] In 1994, the CACP adopted a resolution calling upon the Government of Canada to enact legislation requiring the registration of all firearms, including long guns. This is a position from which the CACP has never wavered.

Leading up to today’s vote, police forces and other pro-registry groups from across the country — from Halifax to Toronto to Vancouver — have joined together to call for the registry’s continuation. The CACP, along with the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Police Boards issued this helpful one-pager correcting the “Top 10 Myths of the Canadian Firearms Program“:

Despite all this, today’s vote is expected to be a squeaker. When C-391 was last voted on, it passed with 164 votes in favour and 137 votes against, with 8 Liberals, 12 NDPers, and one independent siding with the Conservative government.

This time around, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has pledged to keep his party members in line to vote down the bill. NDP leader Jack Layton has not whipped his party, and NDP MPs will be free to vote their conscience. (Bloc Québécois MPs will all vote opposed, as they did last time). Layton has told the press that he is confident that the bill will be defeated, and that he has persuaded enough MPs in his caucus to switch their votes.

We’ll be following what goes on as we get closer to this evening’s vote, which is expected to happen around 5:45. Keep checking back here for details, or follow us on Twitter for any quick developments that crop up today. Have any questions about C-391 we haven’t answered here, or have any tips? Leave your questions and everything else in the comments below…

[Harper] told the Commons that the goal of his proposed initiative is “to save the lives of women and children.”

“We’re looking at a range of options in that regard,” said the prime minister. “Obviously we’ll take the best scientific advice.” […]

After initially playing coy – including statements by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon that the G8 initiative “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning” – the government has since said that contraception is definitely part of the mix.

Abortion, in countries where such services are legal, is another matter.

Everyone clear? No? Well, here come the Liberals to shine a light! Or something. They introduced a motion calling on the G8 to consider the “full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception.” Note that the word “abortion” doesn’t appear. Bob Rae, care to comment?

“Well, you know, I don’t think it’s a matter of . . . abortion under the . . . you know, not a matter of saying abortion is something we’re promoting as a policy,” said the usually smooth-speaking Liberal.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter because the motion failed after the Liberals failed to get enough of their MPs into the house to vote. The motion was defeated, no one knows anything, and the Liberals look ridiculous. Again. Michael Ignatieff’s response?

“I would have preferred a different result last night, and we have some internal caucus issues to work out.”

Everyone to the life rafts.

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.

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.