Congratulations Canada!

The big news of the week comes from up north, where the Liberal party won a national landslide, ending nine years of Conservative party rule and taking 184 (up from just 36 before the election!) of the Canadian Parliament's 338 seats.

The key to the victory was the same as that for Democratic wins in our own country -- voter turnout, which reached 68.5%, much higher than in either of the two previous elections which the Conservatives had won.  The more people vote, the better the left does.  The Liberals came first in every province except Alberta and Saskatchewan.  In the four Atlantic provinces and the far north, the Conservatives were totally wiped out (note that, as in most of the world, red means the left and blue means the right):

In rejecting the Conservatives, Canadians were rejecting the toxic dogmas of austerity economics which have crippled Europe for years and which are advocated by the Republicans in the US.  Canada's Liberals stuck to their guns, refused to move to the center economically, and won.

The Liberals' platform also calls for immediate legalization of marijuana, which the Conservatives fiercely opposed.  Given the length and openness of the border, this will make the insane prohibitionism still prevailing in most US states even harder to enforce than it already is, and hopefully spur more states here to reform.  The outcome was also a vote to speed the shift to renewable energy and away from the destructive fossil-fuel development favored by the Conservatives.

With our Bible Belt, teabaggers, and other wearying forces of reaction, we cannot hope to do so well on a national scale -- but let's try to get as close as we can next year.