I’m a Canadian.
There, I said it. It doesn’t come up very often, mostly because it doesn’t really seem relevant to what I’m generally writing. But today it seems relevant to what I’m wanting to mention, since I’m about to mention Paul Martin.
Paul Martin is (maybe "was", soon?) the Prime Minister of Canada. Canada, if you haven’t been paying attention, is that small feudal state north of Montana with a population of about a million less than the state of California.
As far as most Americans are concerned, Canada’s cheif natural resource and export is probably comedians. You would think that Canada must be simply lousy with comedians. Mike Myers, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Eugene Levy, Jim Carey, Tom Green, Michael J. Fox, Dan Aykroyd, all the Kids in the Hall, Steve Smith (Red Green Show), Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster (Americans probably don’t know the last two, which is too bad), the Rubber Chicken Guy — all are Canadians. I am probably forgetting someone for whom I will kick myself (or be kicked) later, but that’s enough for now.
So other than export comedians and hockey players, what else happens in Canada? It may come as a surprise, but one answer is lots and lots of politics.
Canada loves politics. Or hates them. Or both. Whatever way you’d like to look at it. Canada may have less people than the state of California, but they probably have more politics per capita than the whole United States (as if politics can be quantified, but hey, I’m doing the writing here).
I don’t get bent out of shape at the general lack of knowledge Americans have about Canada, but I do wish, sometimes, that major political news in Canada would at least make a blip on our radar. Not because I think that everyone here in America should care passionately about it, but just so that I would hear about it (okay, yes, I did just say that the entire broadcasting system of the United States should change their habits just for me; what’s wrong with that? ;-) )
Paul Martin, current Prime Minister (for the uninitiated, this is the Canadian equivalent of the Queen of England), is apparently in a whole big heap of trouble, and I’m only just finding out about it now because I happened to visit Conservative Life, a blog which covers Canadian as well as American news. I haven’t followed up the whole story yet, but it seems that millions of dollars have been laundered and nobody thinks it’s realistic that Paul Martin, who was the Minister of Finance, could not have known about it.
He is scheduled to address the nation tonight to give what will presumably be a Nixonesque "I’m not a crook" speech; others (such as the blogger I linked to above) speculate that he may resign.
The country on the other side of the longest unprotected border in the world may be on the verge of having a new leader; I sort of wish that could make the news, here. Oh well.
