By-Election Day

If you live in Victoria, Calgary Centre, or Durham, today is By-Election Day. The Greens were out bright and early with their signs (wait, what?). If you're in one of these ridings, go out and vote!

Elections Canada assures me that:

By law, qualified electors must have three consecutive hours to cast their vote on election day. If your hours of work do not allow for three consecutive hours to vote, your employer must give you time off.

It is an offence for employers to fail to provide time off for voting if required under the Canada Elections Act.

It is also an offence for an employer to reduce an employee's pay where the employee has been provided time off to vote in accordance with the Act. The maximum penalty for violating these prohibitions is a fine of up to $1,000, three months imprisonment, or both.

It is also an offence for an employer to use intimidation, undue influence, or any other means to interfere with the granting of time off to vote under the Canada Elections Act. The maximum penalty for violating this provision is a fine of up to $5,000, five years imprisonment, or both.

FIPPA

After an initial 3 days of majoring in Anthropology, I spent my first year of undergraduate studies doing coursework for a Pre-Journalism program. The political science and social studies classes were engaging and I was interested in the world. When I let go of my J-School ambitions to pursue other fields, however, I stopped really following current events. I don't have TV and don't watch the news, and until recently hadn't so much as glanced at headlines regularly.

Part of the problem is that Canadian politics is infuriating these days. It's infuriating that this country didn't pull together when it had the chance, and instead gave Harper a majority government. The truth is that we're governed by the Harper Government, not the Government of Canada; this is a fact. Is anyone else looking enviously southward?

I was outraged when I first saw Rick Mercer's rant on the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPPA):

Outraged, and unfortunately not overly surprised. It's exactly the sort of thing we've all come to expect from Stephen Harper. Follow the links to other recent Rick's rants and your blood will continue to boil.

So if you're outraged like me, and you want to maintain our tenuous hold on what democracy we have left, sign this petition with the good folks at Avaaz.

And come next election, let's do a better job than last time.