Holy Crap Canada!

We're going to take a short break from all things crafty, because something important happened in Canada yesterday!  For those not interested, click away and I promise to return to crafty endeavours tomorrow. 

Figure grabbed on 2015-10-20 at 11:05 am.

So for those who don't know, we had our Federal election here in Canada, and I think it's safe to say that most people were pretty surprised by the results!  The Liberal Party, which had almost been wiped out in the 2011 election (and kept only 34 seats), managed to not only become the ruling party but did it with a majority!  The Harper Government has been in power for the last 10 years, and you can see by the figures above how the majority of Canadians felt about that.

It was amazing to witness, no matter whether your heart was singing or crying.  I could barely knit as I watched, since I'd glance down for a second and suddenly there were 3 more Liberal-leading ridings!

The figure above may seem odd to other countries - I'm not that well-versed in politics and how it all works, but we vote in our local representative, and the party with the most MPs wins power.  There's other aspects to that, and we have a first-past-the-post election method which is not that popular (the Liberals have promised election reform - we'll see what happens), but that's the basics.

Voter turnout was up this year, at about 68.5% of Canadians voting.  Still not fantastic, but the highest since 1993, so that's something to be glad of.  The Yukon had the second highest turnout at 76%; only Prince Edward Island had a higher turnout at 77%!  I'm not exaggerating when I say that I started to cry when I found out - it's so empowering how engaged most Canadians were this year.

I'm pretty stoked to see that 10 Indigenous and 88 women MPs were elected.  The gender diversity is still low, with female representatives in the House at 26% (the UN recommend at least 30%), but we're getting there.  There's a nice range of First Nation communities represented, including 3 Metis (2 in Winnipeg!), 2 Inuit, 3 Cree, 1 Anishinaabe, 1 Kwakwaka'wakw, and 1 Dene, which is good to see.  They only make up 3% of the House, but again, representation is getting better!

I have so many emotions about this election, but I can't express them well here.  But lets just say that I'm so happy with how passionate Canadians got this year, and that we powered through Canada's longest federal election campaign (78 days! I know I know, that's nothing to you Americans, but our normal campaign is 35 days) and didn't let the length or poor behaviour of politicians lead to (too much) apathy and frustration.

Or maybe those are the reasons so many turned out this year?  Who knows - I'm just glad to see so many people get out and used their voice - no matter who they voted for.  :)


Oh, and apparently the Blue Jays are doing well?  I don't know, I don't follow baseball, but everywhere I look there's frantic Canadian baseball fans, so I guess there's a lot of really happy Canadians, and a lot of 'at least the Blue Jays are winning' Canadians. 

And then there's Canadians like me, who are going: "::shrug:: That's cool, good for you Sports Team!"  :D


ALRIGHT, BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED CRAFTINESS.  Carry on, nothing more to see (of politics, anyways).