I've been trying to learn a bit more about Canadian politics of late, and as such, this election has been a timely observation experience. I've always enjoyed reading forcemajeure's eloquent commentary on the good old northern neighbor; he spent half his life there and (almost) half in the United States, so he approaches any comparison tempered by both sides of the "fence". You can tell Canada is where his heart is, but, like a parent, he tempers that with a bit of chastising as.

A few other of his political notes on his home country which you, as a fellow Canadian, might find somewhat interesting in these changin' times:

One of my many frustrations with Canada is that, at it's heart, it's a loveless group marriage among disparate regions, and that there's never really been some galvanizing event that established Canada's existence for its own sake, and put the question of whether Canada should exist at all beyond debate. For the US, that was the Civil War, which, at steep cost, established that the country was indivisible; for all the differences between, say, Alabama and Vermont, it's simply beyond the pale for either to hint that they're going to make or join a country more to their liking.

Canada isn't like that. No less than four of the ten provinces have active secessionist movements, and a very soft majority in one favors independence, and I doubt the other nine have the resolve to take up arms against the tenth. When the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador got miffed at Prime Minister Martin, he stopped flying the Canadian flag over provincial buildings. Imagine a disgruntled US governor, annoyed with President Bush over this or that, doing that in 2006: you can't, really, because the flag symbolizes something other than the federal government. In Canada, well, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes this is okay, and it all bubbles beneath the surface and the country muddles through. But sometimes it erupts, and it's ugly, and sometimes the national dialogue is hijacked by a need to talk one or more provinces back from the ledge.

Canada's only Big Idea is the health care system, which has deteriorated into a nightmare, kept alive our of an almost religious conviction, impenetrable by fact or argument, that everyone else's system is worse. A nation held together by an entitlement program -- and a creaky one at that -- is a nation living on borrowed time.

My cousin Zev and I were having this discussion just the other day. He thinks the country doesn't need a big idea so much as it needs its politics de-regionalized, and that a Conservative government with a fairly broad geographic mandate -- a prospect which becomes more likely with each passing day of this election cycle -- will rescue the country from regionalism. I'm voting Tory, but I don't think a change of governments constitutes a big, unifying set of ideas. It's just a change of government, a sign that Canada is, just barely, a democracy. Eventually some part of the country or another will get into a foul mood and start talking about leaving.

Sometimes I think Canada's increasingly illiberal attitude toward free expression is the product of a fear that the country's fragile seams couldn't withstand the shock of unvarnished -- truly free -- speech.

I love Canada, but loving it doesn't mean I'm terribly optimistic about its future. I fear it is a country in the process of learning to be helpless.

Seems a tad harsh, but then again, I've never lived there...