Politics in Canada

Any Canadian who’s ever lived south of the border (or any American who’s come north) can tell you pretty quickly that there’s a pretty huge difference between Canada and the US when it comes to politics. For example, here’s a conversation I had with a friend prior to yesterday’s election:
Friend: Who you gonna vote for?
Me: Well I guess my values lean conservative, so I’ll probably vote for the Conservative party even though I don’t really like their leader.
Friend: Ya, that’s cool. I usually vote Liberal so the Conservatives don’t have too big a majority.
Me: Cool. Harper should stop running those dumb attack ads.
Friend: No kidding. Want to play some Call of Duty?
Me: OK.
See how civil that is? We didn’t even agree with each other, yet there was no name calling, no foaming-at-the-mouth. No one got even a little bit angry, or questioned the morality of the other person! In contrast, here’s how political discussions in the U.S. often go
Here’s hoping we Canadians can continue to keep things civil.

One thought on “Politics in Canada

  1. Agreed…as soon as the name-calling starts, people will shut down. And if you shut down, there is no dialogue. One of my cousins is as liberal as I am conservative. We have some WONDERFUL discussions. If we listen to each other, we occasionally find out that the original premise to the argument I was making was NOT the premise she had. When we figured THAT out, we had a very good discussion. We did then agree on SOME of the issues (not all) but at least it gave both of us an understanding of where the “other side” was coming from. The other side of “pro” is not always “anti”…

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