Voter revolt in Canada

Go Ahead, Throw Your Vote Away!

In the post-election haze, the storyline of the NDP’s Québec victory has turned to the strange collection of new Members of Parliament swept into office. Chief among them is Ruth-Ellen Brosseau, the MP-elect for a French-speaking district outside Montreal. Brosseau doesn’t speak French. She doesn’t even live in Québec. Nor did she make any effort to actually campaign in support of her own election. Apparently, she never even set foot in the district or made a single public statement during the six-week election campaign. Nevertheless, she defeated the incumbent Bloc MP by more than 10 percentage points.

Miss Brosseau hasn’t appeared in public or spoken since her victory. The only confirmation of her existence comes from her father — who spoke to a reporter before he was quietly hushed by NDP officials — and her boss at the Ottawa college bar where she works as an assistant manager. The boss said he didn’t even know she was a candidate in the election.

Voters were fed up and voted none of the above in Quebec. And Canada is supposedly one of the economies doing well. The housing bubble hasn't burst, the Canadian dollar remains strong, high resource prices are benefiting the mining and energy sectors, yet voters are in a negative mood.