The Winter Up There Must Give People Brain Freeze

[Mongrel]

Omar Khadr was granted bail today. It may be 13 years too late, but by god, better late than never.

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

A seat in a recent provincial election was just decided by a coin flip. No, really.

[Büge]

Jeb Bush is apparently endorsing Stephen Harper for Prime Minister.

As if you didn't have enough reasons not to vote for him.

[François]

Huh. I always figured Harper wanted to be Dubya, so this makes all kinds of sense. I bet he's feeling real proud.

[Mongrel]

I only got the third (Banff) and last (Moose Jaw), though I felt kind of stupid for not getting the second one. I mean, Avon, come on. Durrrrrr.

The first one, the Trans-Canada one, seems easy... but if you know it was built in sections and not all at the same time, but don't know or remember which parts were built when, then the possibilities explode.

[François]

I only got the last two myself. The Biodome is a really cool place to visit so I'd have been hard pressed to forget that one.

As tempting as it is to want to mock the "Moose Javians are from Winnipeg" guess, I live in Saint-Hyacinthe and we're called Maskoutains so I can understand the "well it could be anywhere, I'll just name a random city with an unusual sort of name" reaction.

[Mongrel]

Advert trucks are driving around Toronto with "IRISH GO HOME!" billboards on the side.

The ad agency responsible is a consortium of Irish recruiting firms, but uh, predictably that "subtlety" has been lost on most people.

[Büge]

Harper has photo ops taken in front of a forest fire.

There's a metaphor here, I'm sure.

[Mongrel]

I like how the actual official tweet is followed by a bunch of nutcases arguing about chemtrails and gummint conspiracies.

[TedBelmont]

THIS TWEET REMOVED FOR INSUFFICIENT CONTEXT

[Mongrel]

Okay, so the way it works in the Parliamentary system is that the Prime Minister can call en election any time they like for pretty much any reason they like.

However they can't govern indefinitely - there's a constitutional limit. Before Harper, the rule in Canada was five years and - I think - a couple of months (I forget exactly how long). Harper passed legislation that supposedly forced the federal government to have elections at regular four-year intervals (that was coming this fall), however because this legislation can't override the constitution without an amendment, all it did was effectively shorten that five-years-and-some-months period to four years exactly - a Prime Minster can still call an election any time they like for any reason they like (which was what the legislation was supposed to stop, although honestly that was simply not really ever a problem in the first place).

In addition to all that, there are certain automatic triggers that can cause an election, such as a minority government losing the budget vote or any vote deemed a "confidence vote" (the budget is always automatically a confidence vote), which means "Does the legislature have confidence in the government?".

This is of course an oversimplification. Parliamentary systems have all sorts of weird quirks and rituals. But you get the general idea.

EDIT:

Harper's calling the election now because everyone hates him and knows he's a scumbag, but the one trump card the conservatives ever had was that they were supposedly "better economic managers" (hahahahahaha!). However, Canada is currently falling into recession and the Harper government has actually been outright lying about it as it has become clear in the past month or two. The more time that goes by, the harder it will be to "hide". Also there's a bunch of Senate scandal stuff on slow burn that was going to pick up in the fall. So I'm not surprised he's trying a snap shot.

[Mazian]

However, Canada is currently falling into recession and the Harper government has actually been outright lying about it as it has become clear in the past month or two. The more time that goes by, the harder it will be to "hide". Also there's a bunch of Senate scandal stuff on slow burn that was going to pick up in the fall. So I'm not surprised he's trying a snap shot.

Anyone who buys goods from the US is going to be hard-pressed to miss the enormous slide in the CAD/USD exchange rate over the last two years.

[Mongrel]

Eh, you can dress that up as the US buck being strong. Even if you don't buy that, there's the stronger argument about it just being an oil price issue.

Of course that brings us to the issue of WHY the Canadian dollar is so affected by the price of oil, but at that point you actually have to start thinking and oh shit that's hard

[Mongrel]

Election 2015: Election's on, God help us all.

[Mongrel]

HuffPo: "One thing you might not know about me is that I like to smile, like other humans often do"

[Büge]

I wish I lived in this guy's riding.

[Büge]

If We Want to Ask Stephen Harper Questions, We Have to Give His Party $78,000

[Mongrel]

Apparently there's a nutcase asshole who goes around Toronto cackling and shouting... all while wearing food on his head.

Novelty local lunatic story!

[Büge]

People in Quebec are cutting $20 bills in half and using them as $10 bills.