I’ve been running around town all day, tying up loose ends on shipping a dog to Australia, getting my insurance claim for a generator I had stolen in Montana, etc. etc.
Plus, it’s a bit difficult typing with your fingers crossed. The polls close here at 7:30 pm – simultaniously from Quebec to Alberta. We will get the results of Newfoundland and the Maritimes before polls close here. The old election blackout on information on results was finally lifted due to a BC court challenge. We have freedom of speech. Just not during elections.
One interesting story brewing. Not sure of what will come of it, but a small community in the province had their town hall rented by Elections Canada, for polling station use, as has been the tradition – only to be later informed they were to vote on the nearby Indian reserve. The first question is the legality of this location – reserves may not qualify as public land. (I’m no legal expert there, can honestly say I don’t know if that’s an issue or not.)
But, there is a First Nations candidate running for the Liberals. And questions about why those phoning, trying to get to the bottom of the last minute change, are being told it’s up to the returning officer, who is in turn, blaming it on directions coming down from “Ottawa”.
I just hope they have a bucketful of scrutineers. First Nations administrators haven’t got a stellar record of keeping track of polling stations in their own elections.
The Shotgun posse will be blogging election results from Stephen Harper’s headquarters at the Calgary Stampede Grounds tonight.
and in other tidbits….
A couple of interesting links from James Joyner and Instapundit – Bush’s cowboy unilateralism in the Sudan (where Canadian – French owned oil company TotalFinaElf is again, at the profitable end of their governments’ blind eye to genocide.
Perhaps it is unfair to suggest that business interests might be tipping the balance against France’s taking a stand on human rights in Sudan. Jemera Rone of Human Rights Watch explains that TotalFinaElf has oil concessions in southern Sudan that it cannot touch until the peace deal between Khartoum and the south sticks. The French are wary of giving the regime in Khartoum a hard time about its ongoing ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in Darfur, in case it walks away from the southern peace deal, thus imperilling Total’s prospects.
Which reminds me – is “PetroKaz” Chretien in Iran yet?
OTB also tips us off to this gem from Lileks. Scroll down to the Parable of the Stairs. Perfect way to commemorate Tax Freedom Day in Canada.
shame.