Canadian politics got a whole lot more press time after the inevitable announcement by Justin Trudeau to vie for leadership of the third-place Liberal Party.
A report on a poll said that if Trudeau were leading the Grits, the party would have a minority government in Ottawa in the next election. That's if the election were held now when people don't know anything about Trudeau aside from who is old man was. Apparently that's enough for my home province to drop to their knees in support of the Libs and the Prairies to well, just continue supporting the Conservatives.
The country's opinion of PET Junior will change in the next couple of years, particularly if he wins the leadership race. Maybe he'll wind up turning Ontario and Montreal off and turning the Prairies into Trudeau believers.
Justin Trudeau is a polarizing figure in Canadian politics, whether he has done anything to ruffle anyone's feathers yet or not. It's a polarizing time in politics to begin with, as the House is home to a right-wing government and a left-wing opposition. There is still plenty of room in the middle, but I don't think we really care about the middle anymore.
Everybody wants to distance themselves as much as possible from what they disagree with, so everybody just skips over the Liberals now. If you don't like the Conservatives, jump on the NDP bandwagon and vice versa.
Trudeau will only really do anything if he is able to convince Canadians that the "middle" is the road to glory. Right now, he's just a candidate for a third-place party.
In international news, Russian band Pussy Riot is a potential recipient for the EU human rights prize. Apparently the prize's criteria is to be sentenced harshly for a ridiculous crime.
Those who recall the Pussy Riot debacle of earlier this year will remember that they were arrested after a display of political defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin and then charged and sentenced for something called "hooliganism," which I hope is a poor Russian translation of a more serious and real-sounding crime.
Storming into a church and making noise is maybe trespassing, but with no harm being done to anyone, any sort of jail term is excessive. That would probably be dealt with by a little probation and a charitable donation around here.
Not every act of political activism is immune to prosecution. There are proper ways to stage a protest. It turns out their arrest and extreme sentence couldn't have been better in drawing attention to their cause, which is the point of a protest. In that sense, maybe the two years in jail won't seem so long for the female punk trio.
Regardless of how persecuted Pussy Riot was, this is a prize that was awarded to Nelson Mandela. I know in some years there are going to be people more worthy for the recognition than others, but it's a pretty big step down when one year it's going to Mandela, imprisoned for almost 30 years before becoming the first democratically elected leader in South Africa, and the next it's going to Pussy Riot.
I'm holding out hope this weekly column gets me nominated in the next couple of years if I keep talking about Pussy Riot and ragging on conservatives.
