Quick Quip...

How to hook leeches: When you're still fishing or using a bobber, the best way to hook a leech is through the "sucker", or mouth, which lets the leech swim free. However, if you're using them while trolling, you should hook them through the tail. Pulling the leech tail-first will actually create a more natural swimming presentation!

This Issue...

We've finally found someone who fishes for Catfish and writes as well! Have fun reading "Catfish" Bob's first article this issue in the web-zine!

Comment...

Well, the Canadian Federal Election is over, and the status quo won -- or did it? Indeed, the Liberal Party won another majority (but only by a couple of seats), meaning that all those efforts that affect outdoors-people detrimentally will continue in force for at least another 4 years ($%$*@&!$). But if you look closer, those of us who voted (and I hpoe every eligible Canadian did -- otherwise you have no right to complain!) can at least confidently raise our voices and expect to be heard -- that is unless the Liberals want to be royally turfed out on their ears next time around.

You see, even though they garnered the majority of seats, they only received 38% of the vote. So how many people didn't want them back...? In a nutshell, and with apologies to those pundits that make their money by over-analysing the whole process, here is the quick rundown.

Canada's eastern maritime provinces, where there is high unemployment and more money is needed to support Employment Insurance and other, similar programs, voted for the social democrat party (the NDP) that promised, of course, more spending and increased support for social policies. Quebec voted just less than half for the separist party and more than half split up among everyone else. The western provinces, where there tends to be more money, continued to react very negatively to supporting the eastern maritimes (where much of their tax money goes -- over 1,000 miles away), and voted for the further right Reform Party that promised to put more power back into the provinces and reduce taxes and the defecit by reducing support for non-essential services and restructuring the government. The big battleground of Ontario, where almost 1/2 the Canadian population lives, split the further-right and much of the protest votes between Reform and the Progressive Conservatives, allowing the Liberals to rise up between them and take 101 out of 103 seats, even though they had less than 50% of the total votes cast.

So my (quick) analysis points to the fact that even though there is a majority government in power, there are no regions in the country where they even have close to a majority of support. Therefore they are going to have to be much more accountable to all of us and start to modify some of their policy positions to better reflect the 62% of us who voted against them.

Who knows; if a few Liberals retire, change sides or get sick enough to prevent them from attending the House of Commons, we might even be able to turf them out sooner than they think. In the mean time, we'll be watching closely, and keep you aware of poicies that can seriously affect a nation with one of the best fishing resources on the globe.

Until next issue...
(tight lines, get it wet, good fishin', see you on the water, etc., etc.).

Scott M. Binnie, Managing Editor