I know you all don't follow canadian politics very much if at all, so I guess it is up to me to sort of tell you a bit about our country

We just had a Federal election and the results were surprising in more ways than one could imagine

1st of all we had 6 parties all wanting our vote. Of these only three or 4 are serrious contenders which is a lot different than your two party system

We ended up with a minority gov't which means no party received enough seats for a majority of all seats. This means somebody has to work with some body to get stuff done with a majority of votes

Our party system rarely allows an elected representative to vote his/her own way but must toe the party line. If you don't you may find yourself unable to quailify for the next election, as the party leader has to allow you to run for office unless you want to run as an independent. Weird how much power our leaders have in who can run for office.

There was obvious splits in the election such that you could literally draw a line between the different party elected seats and regions. Like the whole western prairie was conservative with not one seat won by any other party

The west coast, west of the rocky mountains, was solid NDP and I mean solid

Quebec was mostly quebois party and the liberals picked up Ontario, and some east coast. Ontario has by far the most population and thus the most seats or the liberals would have lost big time

The biggest thing is how solid the votes were for any one party. I mean you can draw a line between different regions and the election results. Never have we seen this before. Usually there will be some favourite son who is re-elected but not this time. Some big names went down to defeat.

So:

If it is any consolation to you folks you are not the only country with serious divides in politics

By the way one of the biggest item of division was the carbon tax

The oil patch of course hates the carbon tax

The people from the city Toronto love the save the planet idea and think the carbon tax is a small price to pay

There are other differences but this election told us how divided we are about the carbon tax/save the planet, and it showed by how people voted

So now you know all there is that is worth knowing about Canada