I noticed that may of you are American, but perhaps you have been paying attention to what is happening with your neighbors to the North and as impartial observers you can help me sort through the political b.s. I am having trouble locating the facts on our recent forced election? Which has not yet been announced but is inevitable.

I've been watching the House of commons but they act like children. The media here is full of propaganda and slam campaigns against dear Iggy( Michael Ignatieff) who has some connections in the United States that are clearly controversial or so the ad campaigns say.

Can anyone shed some light on this issue for me?

In what surely must be one of the more pathetic attempts to make cheap political mileage, the Conservative Party (currently in power) has been trying to portray Iggy (Michael Ignatieff, leader of the opposition Liberal Party) as an unsuitable candidate for high office, and perhaps even somewhat unpatriotic, because his career (as a journalist, mostly) has taken him outside the country for long periods, to both the US and to the UK.

This is particularly absurd in today's small, closely wired world. Look at us communicating on this site, for example! And anyway, large parts of Canada, including where I live, look like a meeting of the UN General Assembly. To take such a narrow and parochial attitude is pretty goofy.

You're kidding aren't you? It's like I'm up to my neck in crap and you're saying, "Hey, come over here and jump in my tank of crap." I vote in the U.S. and get all the crap I can tolerate trying to decide how to vote there. I live in Mexico and fortunately I don't have to vote here but I will occasionally express a private opinion.

As a general rule, I am not a socialist or somewhere to the left of socialist.