So I’ve been covering a by-election.
It’s been a fascinating experience, and another example of that Mirror Universe life I keep banging on about. It’s the same as it was before, only different. I know what I’m doing, except it’s all new again. Such fun!
Ontario had five by-elections last week as a result of a series of resignations by people in the ruling Liberal party. This is at provincial level, not federal. Stay with me, here.
As you might expect from politics, it’s all a lot more complex than it looks. But, as you might expect from newspaper journalists, we try to simplify it. The brief explanation is the last Cabinet of Liberals did something very, very silly by cancelling some gas plants for – openly admitted – political reasons. That cost the taxpayer the equivalent of one of Dr Evil’s ransom demands. So there have been some resignations, and lots of people being careful to avoid certain questions. Yes, politics. The usual.
The result, wonderfully, was an easy introduction for a Scotsman trying to be a reporter in Canada. It’s been like a dry run for an expected general election in the spring, and a very useful training course for me. It let me meet various key people and learn a lot about voting trends, recent history and the parties themselves. Here’s what I’ve learned: it’s the same old nonsense.
I covered a lot of elections in the UK. I loved it, especially the stats and trying to work out the trends in voting which, latterly, could be summed up as “Goodbye Lib Dems”. So it has been a revelation to see the Canadian system has profound similarities. There are various parties all trying to pretend they occupy the middle ground. Everybody talks about old-fashioned campaigning and focusing on the “real issues”. The federal-provincial-municipal structure is much like Scotland’s framework of Westminster-Holyrood-local government. Even the behaviour of the politicians and their staff was the same, ranging from amusingly devious to appallingly, shockingly personal. A sheer delight.
Of course, there are differences. Ontario doesn’t really have an equivalent of the SNP (why would it?) although its parties do represent a broad political spectrum. Everything does tend to be a lot slicker here, especially on the TV, and there’s a lot more economic talk and less of a focus on the problems of the public sector.
The biggest difference for me was how to cover election night, because the various camps have their own events instead of gathering at the vote-counting centre. Interestingly, that meant a far better buffet. The best one had big bowls of pretzels.
But the end result of all this was the same. Somebody won and everybody else lost. One celebration ran late into the night and the others finished early after everyone’s brave faces wore off. I was at one event where the decorations were all gone before the candidate had finished shaking hands and thanking supporters. People trotted out the usual quotes about taking stock and messages from voters and went off for a great big sleep. Politics.
I’m fond of saying that people are people wherever you go. One of the most interesting things about moving your whole life to a new country is seeing how true that is. People are people and politicians are politicians.
They are wonderful, fascinating, inspirational, hilarious, back-stabbing people. I love elections. There’ll be another one along soon.