One Week to Go

That's all there is, one week until election day. You can almost sense the excitement in the air. People are talking about nothing else then the election, providing you count 'when are they finished?' as election conversation.

Still I thought about the leaders of the various parties and wondered what they think of this final week. So here's some thoughts:

Stephen Harper- since the last election he developed a layer of Teflon in that nothing sticks to him at all; contempt of parliament, please; G20 scandal, big yawn, big honking fighter jets, yawn yawn yawn. I think he wants to get through this final week with as little pain as possible. He has been running a flawless campaign, no major gaffes, no comments about culture that cost him Quebec. It's looking like he might get his majority after all. If he wins, he will spend time in his secret lair with his pals from the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. As leader of them all, he plans to control the world and it starts in Canada.

Michael Ignatieff- less then one week and the nightmare ends. The pain will stop and he can go back to doing whatever he does when he's not trying to run for Prime Minister of Canada. The question is when will he resign? I suspect there will be discussions with Liberal leadership and all the people who want his job. No doubt they will promise not to stab him too much if he leaves right now.

Jack Layton- hasn't this past weekend been interesting for the NDP. I've often written that Jack who is very popular with Canadians was never able to have a halo effect, well was I wrong. It seems the party has come from its usual doldrums of 13-16% to nearly tied with the Liberals. If that wasn't exciting enough, he's leader of the pack in Quebec. I believe he hopes the week ends with the momentum either growing or consolidating. He's also hoping it ends before he has to renege on any more campaign promises and people start asking too many hard questions, like 'where's the money coming from'? He's already starting to gut his green policies. Could be interesting.

Gilles Doucette- he's going to have a tough week because he's actually going to have to campaign. With the surging NDP on his home turf he's got to give people a reason to actually vote for him. I mean usually by now he's crabbing about how rotten the rest of Canada is to Quebec, which is usually how he starts the campaign. This is good enough, but now he's got some competition. It's new territory for him, will be interesting to see how he reacts.

Elizabeth May- it's time to win at least your seat and maybe a couple more.

The Electorate. In a week we will decide the outcome of the election. We will enter that little polling station and receive a small piece of paper. With pencil in hand we shall vote for the person to represent our riding. If enough from one party win, that party will form the government and the party leader will be prime minister. If one party gains a majority then we will enjoy the fact that as much as they will ignore us, we can ignore them. Politicians are like all officials, they do their best work when we don't notice them, for when we notice them, it means they screwed up.

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