How Not to Explain a Foreign Election - Time Magazine Edition

Erik Heinrich of Time decided to chime in on the Canadian federal election today with an utterly dreadful article that essentially argued that the flip of Quebec towards backing the NDP could be setting up the country for another referendum (surprise!).  Also, the oozing level of condensation aimed at the 'junior jacks' of the NDP's Quebec caucus is palpable:

Many voters in Quebec said they had voted NDP to give federalism a last fighting chance, after what they view as the failure of other national parties. But what chance does the new official opposition have of satisfying Quebec's traditional gripes — which include the call for autonomy over language and immigration policy — while relying on a large contingent of MPs with training wheels? 

It's fair to say that many NDP candidates did not expect to win seats, and they face a steep learning curve that will include language lessons for unilingual Anglophones representing French-only constituencies. 

"The NDP will need to turn its mind to how it can consolidate support in Quebec without alienating supporters in the rest of the country," says Robert Drummond, professor of political science and public policy at Toronto's York University. 

That balancing act could well prove to be the undoing of NDP's hold on the role of official opposition. Throw in inexperienced MPs more used to writing exams than they are to Question Period on the Hill, and it's easy to imagine Quebec voters again feeling shut out in Ottawa. That could lead to another independence referendum in Quebec in four years, in which separatists would argue that Ottawa has proven itself unable to deliver. But before such a rendez-vous with history, at least Canada's newest MPs will have a few years to work on their French.

Yes, what chance do they have when people like Erik Heinrich decide to take the quick route in gawking at the amount of young MPs in the caucus and pontificates upon his belief that they naturally cannot accomplish the tasks they've been thrown into?  "Has Canada lost its marbles?" he wonders.

I really hope that the reason why this article is so bad is because of the poor editing on the online edition.  Heinrich refers to 'Salty Jack Layton' as if that were either his real name or a moniker that readers are supposed to understand.  I imagine the intent is to remark upon the colour of his hair and mustache.  Similarly there's reference to the NDP's new MP from Pontiac, Mathieu Ravignat who apparently used to be a 'Community Party' candidate, when I know that he was in fact a Communist Party candidate back in the 1997 federal election.  The article concentrates on his executive status in the 'Ottawa Medieval Sword Guild' as if his Masters in Political Science and status as an organizer in the Canadian Union of Public Employees didn't matter.  It took me five minutes to dig up that information, but apparently it was too boring to make it into the article.

Americans apparently don't know a lot about Canada, but articles such as these are -definitely- not the way in which the readership of Time should be educated on Canadian politics.