Decision 2000: Canada Has Its Day

By CALVIN TRILLIN

The Canadians, who have always been sensitive about being ignored by the American press, managed to schedule a national election during a period in which Americans are so absorbed with the vote counting in Florida that the President of the U.S. could barely make the front page with a visit to Vietnam. Not to worry, Canadians, I was paying attention. Although the reputation Canadians have for being orderly must irritate them almost as much as having their country ignored, it is my duty to report that they had no trouble figuring out who won. I discovered while perusing the Globe and Mail that the only problem with vote counting took place in Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia, where dozens of citizens had to recast their ballots after a man carried the ballot box out of a polling station and threw it into a waste-treatment lagoon--a method of slowing down the count that even Katherine Harris never thought of.

The big winner in the election was Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a political figure considered old hat by everyone except the voters. The big loser was the Canadian Alliance's Stockwell Day, a political figure considered fresh and exciting by everyone except the voters. (I think the Alliance, a new party, chose an unfortunate name, by the way. What would you call one of its followers--an Alliance-ite?) There were two other candidates, both of whom managed to do better than Ralph Nader without being nearly as sanctimonious.

Canadian elections have historically been forums for debating specific programs. That makes sense in a parliamentary system, since the winner, having won by gaining a legislative majority, has the power to turn his programs into law. If Canadians weren't so polite, which goes along with being orderly, they might point out that the detailed discussions American presidential candidates engage in about programs are virtually meaningless. Partly because of the separation of powers, the new President almost never signs into law the programs he promised. When you look at it that way, the only really important thing about George W. Bush's Social Security plan was that he didn't seem to understand it.

So did the Canadians discuss programs this time around? I am happy to say that while the American candidates were exchanging trumped-up numbers about the cost of prescription drugs, Canadians, thanks to a CBC television program's campaign to satirize the Alliansistas' belief in national referenda, were gathering signatures for a referendum that would require Stockwell Day to change his first name to Doris.

So when you read all this commentary about how the winner of the American presidential election will in some sense have lost, think of Stockwell Day. If his party had triumphed, he could have found himself named Doris Day, the television program's campaign having drawn more than twice the number of signatures that Alliance-ators had considered necessary to put an issue before the people. Every time he rose in Parliament to make a speech, some Liberal smart aleck would shout from the back benches, "Give us a song, Doris!" This is a man who won by losing.