Canadian Election - 1st Leaders Debate

As you may or may not know, the Canadians are having an election in January. The government of the Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin fell a few weeks ago on a straight no-confidence motion leading to the dissoution of Parliament by the Governor General.

A short primer- the Prime Minister of Canada is the leader of the political party which gets the majority of seats in the House of Commons (lower chamber of Parliament). The seats are divided by population within a province. These divisions are called ridings. Thus, Ontario, which has the largest population, has the most number of seats in the House. The upper house is the Senate whose members are appointed by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is a member of Parliament and represents a riding. Paul Martin represents a riding in Montreal, Quebec. If the party that has the most seats doesn't have more than the other parties combined, the government is called a minority government. The government can still function, but when a no-confidence motion is introduced in the House, the goverment may fall if all of the oppostion parties' members vote against the government. There is also a coalition government that may form when one or more parties formally join with the ruling party to form a sort of "super" party.

Last night, the leaders of Canada's four major political parties- the Liberals ("Grits"), the Conservatives ("Tories"), the New Democratic Party (NDP), and the Bloc Quebecois (Bloc) faced off in the first of two English language debates. There are a total of four debates with two in English and two in French. The first of the French debates took place Thursday night. These debates were held in Vancouver, BC.

The Liberal Party of Canada is lead by current Prime Minister Paul Martin who took office a couple of years ago and survived last year's election becoming the Prime Minister of a minority government. The Conservative Party of Canada is lead by Stephen Harper, the New Democrats are lead by Jack Layton, and the Bloc Quebecois, which only fields candidates in Quebec since it is for the sovereignty of Quebec, is lead by Gilles Duceppe.

In my next post... post debate reaction.