Canadian election gets down and redolent of loam
The tag line at the Canadian Conservative Party’s Web site, attacking the liberal candidate Stéphane Dion — as you know, the PM just called for an election — seems oddly 19th century:
“Canada cannot afford risky experiments at a time of uncertainty”
It’s as if Obama were to say, “My opponent’s steadiness of purpose is challenged by recent announcements seemingly at odds with this character,” or if McCain were to say, “To what end shall our nation proceed if driven by hands untested by trial?”
The Conservative site does feature “MyCampaign,” a “virtual campaign office,” that lets you write letters to editors, recruit friends, call talk radio, and engage in other acts of personal broadcasting. As far as I can see, there’s no actual social networking available.
The Liberal party site does some Ajax-y launch-on-hover things, and has a prominent link to Facebook where Dion has 12,000 supporters. The page was updated on Dec. 14, June 19, and Aug. 19. The Liberal’s YouTube page leads with a video of a slow clap for nature, posted two months ago.
The NDP’s Facebook page has 13,000 supporters and a campaign video uploaded yesterday, although the updates have been about monthly. And the NDP has been twittering. Well, to be exact, they’ve tweeted three times, but once was six minutes ago. They have 169 followers, but are following 151, creating an amazing following-to-follower relationship that they can only hope will not be sustainable in the long run.
(And, yes, although I’m being snarky about the Canadian Web sites’ campaign rhetoric, I do prefer it to America’s.)
[...] Weinberger pointed out his interesting post about Canadian civility and drew a parallel to what our civility would look applied to the American context. It [...]
There’s no social networking available on the Conservative Party’s site, because there’s no physical presence social networking permitted in the Conservative Party. .All networking has to be pre-approved by the dictator’s…. err… Stephen Harper’s office, including the ability of candidates to speak to the media!
Dick Cheney may have a man-sized safe in which to lock away secrets. Stephen Harper is an information black hole. f19th century? How about Harper’s version of “Létat, c’est moi!”
Not that I’m a fan, but Stephen Harper actually has 3 Twitter accounts — one called steveharper, and the other in French and English (MiseajourWebPM and PMWebUpdates). The latter two actually got updated recently, while the first one seems untouched these past 4 months. And I noticed Harper has a Flickr account, although it’s sparse.
Perhaps worst of all, however, is the Canadian corporate presence on Twitter, if Air Canada is anything to go by. Looking at that page, I’m thinking we Canadian consumers/ customers are just a bunch of captive sheep who have even forgotten how to bleat.
Bahhh…
“…we Canadian consumers/ customers are just a bunch of captive sheep who have even forgotten how to bleat.”
OMG – i think i just busted rib :-D I’m gonna drop that one in the boardroom at work sometime very soon!
Thank Dog we only have 5 or 6 weeks of circus, as opposed to 18+ months.
I worry that unless we have a stable government, ie. Harper. we are headed for loss of confidence in the Canadian economy resulting in a recession similar to the USA.
We have a governement, we should support it until these hard economic times have passed then we can go back to the game called politics