the elevator pitch

Canadian politicians are like hockey: They only get attention outside of their nation when they shock and appall.

When Jon Stewart earlier this week kicked off The Daily Show with a lampoon of the strange happenings in Ottawa, it marked a new low for a nation in the middle of an unprecedented political calamity.

Stewart remarked that the attempt by opposition parties to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper was baffling for Americans to comprehend.

“Force him from office? You can do that?” Stewart said. “Because we’ve had no confidence in our guy for quite some time now, and he’s taking forever to leave.”

The Daily Show’s jokes followed scathing criticism in The Economist, which called the opposition’s attempted coup and Harper’s petulant response “un-Canadian”, and critical coverage in mainstream media outlets around the world.

When Harper, a Conservative, shut down Parliament until January 26 in order to save his job, Canadians were outraged and the rest of the world became curious. Embroiled in the most turbulent economic crisis in a lifetime, the nation’s leader decided to halt government at a time the country is in great need of economic stimulus. That’s un-Democratic to his rivals, unbelievably stupid to many of his constituents and bizarre to everyone else.

In response, his rivals have acted fast. The Liberal party, which had banded together with the two other largest blocs in Parliament, replaced Stephane Dion with the more charismatic and articulate Michael Ignatieff as leader, acting under what it called emergency circumstances. Ignatieff is likely to be the nation’s next prime minister. Harper’s fate seems to be sealed.

When Ignatieff, 61, is in office, it will mark the first time the leaders of Canada and the United States share degrees from the same school. Both he and Barack Obama graduated (in different years) from Harvard University; Obama with a law degree, Ignatieff with a Ph.D in history.

Ignatieff, like Obama, is also an author and possesses a global outlook that was forged from time spent abroad. Ignatieff has lived in London and his wife is a Hungarian national.

Whether he has Obama’s gift for reconciliation and diplomacy with rivals remains to be seen. Perhaps with Harper out of the way, the partisanship that has plagued Canadian politics could fade. If it doesn’t, then the nation could find itself gaining more of the kind of attention its citizens find shameful.

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