For those of us whose ears are still ringing from Donald Trump and/or Bernie Sanders’s bellowing, Canada, our fair neighbor to the north, is about to have its Election Day. Unlike America, where campaigning lasts over a year and 158 filthy rich families have made up half of the 2016 presidential election’s funding, Canadian politicians make their cases over a frenzied 78 days.
And boy, it’s been a doozy—so sayeth John Oliver, the gleefully uninhibited host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight.On the local side, conservative candidate for Canadian Parliament Jerry Bance was forced to resign after it was revealed that he was caught peeing in a client’s mug via hidden camera during a 2012 exposé on the home repair industry. If that weren’t enough, New Democratic Party candidate Alex Johnson has taken heat for a 2008 Facebook post on an electrified fencepost at Auschwitz that said it “looked phallic.” When pressed about the post, Johnson claimed to have no idea what Auschwitz was until now. Oh, and Johnson is the vice chair of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. She helps run a school district. Yikes.
But on Sunday night, Oliver reserved the lion’s share of his ire for incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who, thanks to Canada’s lack of term limits, has already been in office for nearly a decade. The conservative robot-politician has come under fire for, well, everything.“Don’t be deceived by his bland exterior. Where there is banality, there is evil,” said Oliver. “For instance, Harper’s government has passed numerous laws weakening environmental protections, they’ve scaled back health care for some refugees—which a federal court called ‘cruel and unusual treatment’—and Harper himself has taken an extremely strong position on marijuana.”Then Oliver threw to a clip of Harper claiming there was “overwhelming and growing scientific evidence” that marijuana “is infinitely worse” than tobacco.“Are you high?” asked Oliver. “Marijuana is not worse than tobacco!”
The prime minister’s hard-line (and boneheaded) stance on marijuana, however, pales in comparison to his “pandering to Islamophobes,” as Oliver put it.
“Earlier this year, his government passed a law called the ‘Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act,’ stiffening penalties for things like honor killing and polygamy, despite the fact that both those things were already illegal in Canada,” said Oliver. “And then a few weeks ago, they suggested a ‘barbaric cultural practices hotline’ despite the fact that 911 continues to exist in Canada. And this is on top of the fact that they once banned women from wearing the niqab while taking the oath of citizenship.”
Not convinced? Harper is also in a godawful band, the Van Cats. Here’s a video of them laying waste to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”:
“Canada is America’s next-door neighbor, and Stephen Harper is her dickhead boyfriend. You know, the one she won’t split up with despite the fact that he tells her what to wear and makes her listen to his shitty, shitty band.”
Amazingly enough, it’s against Canadian law for outsiders to tell Canadians how to vote in the Canadian elections. Section 331 of the Canada Elections Act states, “No person who does not reside in Canada shall…induce electors to…vote for or refrain from voting for a particular candidate.” And it comes with a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine and six months in jail.
This revelation prompted Oliver to proclaim, “I guess what you’re saying, then, Canada, is do you want to dance?” before taking out a wad of $5,000 in Canadian cash and “telling you not to vote for Stephen Harper” in the most Canadian way possible: alongside a beaver mascot playing “Sweet Caroline” on a keyboard, a moose mascot receiving a colonoscopy courtesy of Canadian single-payer health care, and—yes—Mike Myers dressed as a Mountie riding a snow plow.
Cue Myers, who came out and said, “I love Canada. But the fact that it has a law banning outsiders from telling Canadians how to vote is one of the least Canadian things possible. Oh, and don’t vote for Stephen Harper.” “Don’t do it, and I’ll tell you why: Stephen Harper doesn’t care about black people,” added Oliver, in a nod to Kanye West’s infamous 2005 George W. Bush rant in front of Myers.
“Oh God! Not again!” Myers exclaimed.
Oliver then corrected himself. “Sorry, what I meant to say was: Stephen Harper doesn’t care about Muslim people!”
Totally fair, Myers replied. And then the two funnymen made it rain $5K in Canadian bills. Take that, weird Canadian law!