Canadian Idle – we gotta get the federal election going somehow, eh?
by Nicole Gall
According to Elections Canada, only 59.1 per cent of Canadians cast votes in our country’s most recent federal election in 2008 – a figure that represents a record low in the history of the Confederation. At least there’s no need to worry whether or not this embarrassing electoral show will shame our Confederate Fathers – they stopped paying attention decades ago. Low voter participation has become such a chronic problem in Canada that if the Fathers rolled over in their graves every time an election came around, they’d be doomed to one dizzy slumber.
Tired of electoral trouble, political scientists worldwide are turning to unconventional methods to motivate voters. In Canada, comparisons made by Alex Marland of the Memorial University of Newfoundland may even awake electoral excitement in everyone from apathetic citizens to Sir John A. In a paper presented to the Canadian Political Science Association, Marland divulges the key to mitigating Canada’s democratic malaise. While another tumble with our state’s eighteenth prime minister might be too taxing, political scientists like Marland are looking to celebrities such as his son, Ben Mulroney, as an inspiration for electoral participation.
With his bronzed burnish, lustrous locks and, according to CTV.ca, his “natural charm and likeability”, Ben Mulroney stimulates suffrage at the centre of a program that, in 2004, attracted 60,000 more viewers than the same week’s CBC News federal election night coverage. This program, if you don’t already know, is Canadian Idol. The Canadian edition of the pop program that follows amateur crooners as they compete for a music contract and encourages viewers to have their say via telephone or text message has been a hit each summer since it aired in 2003.
When it comes to drama, Q-Period is the closest thing the government has to a televised national contest.
Defying claims that democratic elections have become divorced from the rhythm of our age, Canadian Idol attracts all ages; according to a 2006 Neilson Media Research data report by CTV, Idol has regularly been the most watched show by viewers ranging all the way from 2 – 54 years old.
These statistics are shocking, and not only because they show Canadians have a taste for televised karaoke contests. Inviting even more questions than our programming preferences is the uncharacteristic behaviour that Idol inspires in Canadian viewers – voting. According to Marland, over 30 million votes have been cast per season since 2004, and the number has been increasing each year. A rough estimate indicates that, on average, each viewer votes twice a week for 10 weeks.
Not only does Mulroney’s Canadian Idol motivate otherwise-apathetic Canadians to vote for their preferred candidate, it does so under stricter stipulations than the forsaken federal elections. While the elections offer Canadians the option of three days of advance polling in addition to the entirety of Election Day, Idol obliges its viewers to vote within a two-hour window of the weekly performance episode. While Elections Canada only throw a federal election every four years (with a few exceptions), Idol airs every summer. Finally, while federal polls remain free and fair, each vote for your favourite Idol via text message costs $0.50! Although a report on Elections Canada’s website, Explaining the Turnout Decline in Canadian Federal Elections: A New Survey of Non-voters, found that almost one third of all non-voters cited “too busy at work” as their reason for not voting, for tens of thousands of Canadians, the faster, more frequent, and less financially viable Idol “elections” are apparently worth finding the time for.
Sure, sceptics might suggest that a comparative analysis between a country’s electoral system and a televised talent show is inappropriate. Fortunately, political scientists such as Marland understand the immediacy of our electoral problems. Such studies ask what politicians can learn from Canadian Idol contestants; I’m more than happy to make the conclusions.
Replacing Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand for Ben Mulroney himself would be a good start to liven up elections. Unfortunately, Mulroney has publicly ruled out a career in politics, writing in his CTV.ca autobiography that “a career in politics is not part of [his] grand plan.”
Instead, Elections Canada will have to settle on imitating some other aspects of the vote-inspiring show: for starters, the theme song. One can depend on the upbeat twang of its ultra-modern, synth-based beat to draw Canadians’ eyes away from after-dinner dishes and into the ephemeral excitement of Mulroney’s intro. Compare it to our national anthem – now over a century old – the drip of those dishes accrues more attention. Sorry, Calixa Lavallée, Canada is going to need a snappier song to pull uninterested, dishwashing Canadians to the polls.
Beyond an upbeat intro, Idol offers drama. As in the case of our lacklustre anthem, Canada has a second-rate equivalent: Parliament’s televised Question Period. When it comes to drama, Q-Period is the closest thing the government has to a televised national contest. To become a hit, however, Q-Period has a long way to go. Idol provides a good example in its inclusion of segments such as visits to the top contestants’ hometowns, cultivating a more personal relationship between viewers and their preferred pseudo-popstars. This creates a sense of relatability many voters lack from legislators. Candid clips from within the “Idol Mansion” offer a look at the inner workings of the program – a degree of transparency that voters feel devoid of.
A trendy new theme song and candid camera time could create a more popular series of Q-Period episodes to capture Canadians’ attention, even without a C-list celebrity host. Marland may be right; a political system that models itself after Mulroney’s Canadian Idol may drum up some after-dinner interest in the doings of our democracy. By trading in their stuffed shirts for ripped jeans, politicians may attract the viewership, and ultimately, the votes that will once and for all quell political scientists’ confused debates over mitigating Canada’s democratic malaise. The only thing that Marland fails to address is the confusion that citizens may experience when they visit a governmental office and receive CD samples as opposed to the goods and services that a responsible (albeit unmusical) government must provide.
Nicole Gall is a third-year political science student at Carleton
