Teaching Canadian politics in the aftermath of last week

Not much to report today, either. In my English conversation class this evening, I had assigned them a couple of editorial essays on the mess that was last week in Canadian politics, and I ended up spending almost an hour just explaining how the Canadian parliamentary system works. The system itself is complicated enough, being a colonial version of Britain’s Westminister system, but as soon as you throw in minority governments, “vote of no confidence” and prorogation, it gets very, very complicated. Then I had to explain the Governor-General and her role as the representation of the Queen. Then I had to discuss the King-Byng affair and how that changed the conventions around the role of the Governor-General. It was a big mess.

Anyway, I went home after that, got some bread and wine, made a super-spicy channa masala, and read with more than a bit of schadenfreude about the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges.