Canada’s ruling minority Conservative party is starting rumours that it may or may not be wanting to hold an election this year because they’re worried about Quebec (what a shock) and barbecues or something. Broken yesterday, the story has died a quick and painless death because everyone knows that if an election were held anytime soon, Canadians – almost all of whom now equate politicians with traffic cops, tax auditors, and that substitute teacher you had in elementary school who you could make cry within 10 minutes – would vote for Rick Mercer or #6 from Battlestar Galactica rather than deal with another middle aged, self-important ex-businessman with boring hair.

Canadian elections are boring. Why? Because they focus on such tedious minutia as “issues” and “topics the mean something to Canadians” and stuff like that. It’s nothing like the rollercoaster of American elections where everyone from your campaign manager’s best friend’s wife’s boss’ daughter to your kindergarten teacher is thrust forward as a character reference while icky stuff like issues are given snappy titles and bullet points. Hurray for making things palatable!

Read what will happen when I rule the country after the jump!

Of course, Canada’s Conservative party makes it a big, verbosely expressed point to take a page (made from Canadian timber, of course!) from our southern cousins’ playbook and launch all sorts of personal attacks on opposing candidates (who, admittedly, probably deserve a little razzing). But they do this despite the fact that most Canadians view personalised politics with distaste and, in poll after poll, state that they pay no attention to them, except maybe to decide to vote for the ads’ target instead of against.

But the other parties are no better in their own particular ways. Quebec has a regional separatist party that play hypocritical federal mind games. The NDP – supposedly leftist – is run by an egomaniac married to another self-righteous egomaniacal politician (some kind of dream power couple, they would have the media have us believe) who has no qualms making bizarre deals with the rightwing in order to maintain his tenuous grasp on what little power his party has. And then there are the Liberals, beige and about as thrilling as a day-old bowl of oatmeal, and with as many innovative ideas too.

So as you about to see, I have fantastic ideas and should be made Benevolent Ruler of the Hyphenated -Canadian and -Quebecois People for All Eternity immediately. When this occurs, I will:

• Rename the country Jessica (I like the name’s all) sand move the capital to Dildo, Newfoundland and Labrador (Yeah, it’s really called that! Cool!) – except that I will stay in Toronto, or maybe Montreal;
• Exile all smokers to the French principality of St-Pierre and Miquelon. Let the French government deal with them;
• Saskatoon and Regina will be renamed Little Edmonton and Little Winnipeg respectively
• Resettle all vegans in their natural homeland of Vancouver Island, whose regional flower will be the brussels sprout, so that the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace;
• Enact a law enforcing the use of French and only French in the workplace in Alberta;
• To add linguistic balance, I will enact a law enforcing the use of Inuktitut and only Inuktitut in the workplace in Quebec;
• 20 lashes in public for Toronto wanna-be hipsters caught calling the city T-dot (please please please begin enforcing this even before my reign of benevolence commences!);
• Force Maritimers to watch over and over again every single heart-warming family drama that takes place in a small, cheery, CBC, 19th Century Nova Scotia town, where people are good people and neighbours look out for each other and all that stuff, that has ever been inflicted upon Canada ever since it was discovered that Scottish settlers were way cooler than anyone else ever;
• Make Northerners do something – anything! – so that we know who the hell they are and what they hell they do (besides drink);
• Enact a winter anti-tax for Manitobans whereby the government will pay them to live through the months of November through April, inclusively and a similar giant, blood-sucking, vampire mosquito anti-tax for the months of June through September. Why else would anyone stay there? (I admit it; I grew up in Winnipeg, which is a fine city with ballet and orchestras and art galleries and cafes and running water and electricity and stuff)

So as you can see, my rule will be wise and people-centric, because I know what Canadians really care about. Vote for me, or pay the consequences later.

But remember, global warming is totally a myth!

From the New York Times, a headline I never would have imagined seeing a few years ago.

Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who was detained by American officials in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was kept captive for nearly a year and regularly tortured, will receive more than 10.5 million Canadian dollars ($8.9 million) in compensation from the Canadian government, under a settlement announced today.