Election Day!

While I can't really say I've been following this much, I do think it was worth mentioning that it is election day today (as in a national election - big stuff).  Back on March 25th it was announced we'd have an election this year because the conservative party in power failed to create a majority.  So after a few months of campaigning, today is the day.  While I don't yet understand the detailed workings of Canadian government, I did want to share a few facts and resources that I find helpful in getting a basic understanding of what is going on with this election.

Canada is on a parliamentary system, which is similar to the UK and many other countries, but pretty different than the US.  There are four political parties represented in parliament as of today (prior to the election), and they are:  NDP (far left, social democrats), Liberals (between left and center left), Conservatives (right of the Canadian political spectrum, also known as Tories), and Bloc Québécois (social democrats, for sovereign Quebec).  There are many other parties as well that exist but didn't have any seats in parliament.  Keep in mind that in general Canada as a country is quite a bit more "left" than the US so while I'm using the same words as we would in the US, their spectrum is calibrated farther left.

I find the following Wikipedia article to be immensely helpful in understanding the current situation:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Canada. The last national election was in October 2008 when this conservative government was elected.  Once an election is called, the campaign period must be 36 days or longer prior to the election.  This campaign is exactly 36 days which seems to be more of the trend due to tight limits on campaign spending (if it goes longer than 36 days they still don't get anymore campaigning money).  As votes roll in tonight, may the best party win!