by PATRICK LEJTENYI

How much apathy can one electorate show? After a dismal turnout at last month’s municipal election, Montrealers are now being asked to head to the polls again, this time to elect a new federal government. This is proving to be one of the most unpopular, least cared about elections Canada has held in a generation, not to mention, at eight weeks, one of the longest. Can you smell the excitement in the air? No? Neither can we.

• If not for Montreal, it’s a pretty sure bet Quebec would be all blue, all the time, with a few holdouts in the Gatineau and South Shore. But next January, it’s looking like the Liberals could lose some of their traditional strongholds. Some strongholds, like Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew’s Papineau and Liz Frulla’s Jeanne-Le-Ber, were won by the narrowest of margins. PM Paul Martin’s Quebec lieutenant Jean Lapierre carried Outremont with 2,945 votes last year, but his opponents, bloquiste Jacques Léonard and New Democrat Léo-Paul Lauzon, may also carry off an upset.

• Speaking of Léo-Paul Lauzon, the man sure can talk. During an interview with Election Notebook, liberally sprinkled with “tabarnac”s and “crisse”s (on Lauzon’s part, not EN’s), the UQÀM social economy prof said he took on the job because it would be an “immense pleasure” to challenge federal Liberal Quebec lieutenant (and reformed sovereigntist) Jean Lapierre. But he saved most of his venom for former PQ Treasury Board president Jacques Léonard for being part of the péquiste cabal that dismantled Quebec’s much-vaunted safety net. “These people,” he says, referring to former PQ premiers Lucien Bouchard, Bernard Landry and bigwigs Joseph Facal, Guy Chevrette and others, “want American credit agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor to write our budgets.” Excitedly denouncing their post-independence plan to sell off the SAQ and Hydro-Québec, and to adopt the U.S. dollar as the Quebec currency, Lauzon says they wanted to turn Quebec into an “American protectorate like Puerto Rico.”

Some noise has been made in the francophone media about Lauzon’s past dalliances with sovereignty, but he says he wants a sovereign and compassionate Canada, one more able to stick up to the United States.

• Got a big mouth? Fancy yourself a pundit? A bit of both? Visit www.electionprediction.org, an online forum where political hacks can mouth off with (almost) impunity—“malicious, inaccurate, slanderous or misleading information” will, the editors warn, be ignored. Insta-pundits give their reasons, often well-considered and lucid, on why such-and-such a riding will go to such-and-such a candidate. Each riding has its own page, with entries from people calling themselves “Bear and Ape,” “Alberta Grit,” “ex-liberal,” “Benjerry79” and “Cyclone prime.” In true Montreal fashion, the entries in the Quebec-ridings section are in both languages. There is a lot of overlap from armchair analyst contributors, but if you’re in the mood for some reasonably well-thought-out political discourse, check out this site.

• Canadians may find this election as dull as Antiques Roadshow and annoying as the Air Farce, but one illustrious media outlet doesn’t: Britain’s news magazine of record, The Economist. It put “Canada’s wintry election” on the cover of its Dec. 3 issue, and features an impressive 14-page special report on the country it called, in a previous survey in September 2003, “rather cool.” With the usual dry and insightful wit, the survey’s author, foreign editor Peter David, still believes we can be “cool,” but with caveats. He praises our tolerance, immigration, economic dynamism—which has since, uh, cooled—and our wealth of natural resources, but, like a rich and disapproving British uncle, says we lack ambition. He calls Canada’s political debate “tepid,” and that we are “happy to gather around an unadventurous liberal (and Liberal) consensus.” Apparently, we have faith in our “ability to muddle through,” and we don’t mind being a little poorer than our American neighbours because we enjoy our home-grown social model. But David quotes an unnamed Canadian diplomat who has “bewailed [our] ‘passion for bronze.’” Hmmm. Maybe those rich British uncles have a point.

• Special thanks to Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe for providing the campaign’s first gaffes: the first came last week, when he floated the idea of an all-Quebec hockey team to compete at international competitions (we’d be killed by our lack of defence, was the general consensus). The other was his self-admitted over-enthusiastic vow to “make the Liberals disappear” in Quebec, which sounds a little too ethnic-cleansing for our tepid political debates. But odder still was Jean Lapierre’s comparison of Duceppe’s comments to the Nazis. Jewish groups expressed bewilderment.