The day before the election last May, Elections Canada warned voters that they should ignore phone calls telling them that their polling station had changed -- calls that also sometimes instructed people that they would have to vote at new locations, often far from where they lived.

Earlier in the campaign, a number of opposition party candidates reported that voters in their ridings had been getting aggressive phone calls pretending to be from those opposition members' campaigns, and seemingly designed to antagonize voters.

In both cases, the Conservatives were quick to play see-no-evil-hear-no-evil. None of this has anything to do with us, they said. And our candidates, too, have been victims of dirty tricks.

Dwayne Winseck is a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. His invaluable insight and expert analysis will periodically be cross-posted from his blog. (Sun) Media Watch is pleased to share his knowledge with our readers! You can read Winseck's full bio here.

The following was originally posted the day before the election, throwing cold water on the idea of Canadian media having a "liberal bias."

In as many words, today's editorial in the Globe and Mail suggests that only Canada's Conservative and Liberal parties are entitled to govern our country. Which is an interesting look into the minds of Canada's eastern establishment. It reminds the rest of us of many things.

First, this text reminds us that Canada's establishment doesn't like change very much.

(Last of a four-part series)

The politics of fear helped define the 2011 federal election.

For all of its darkness, fear also drove a lot of voters to consider new possibilities, to make new choices, including jumping on the orange wave.

The challenge for progressives wanting to ensure Canada maintains the promise of social justice that we briefly coalesced around post-war is to begin work immediately on a reframe: Our challenge is to change the conversation, rather than get trapped in the conversation that has been set for us (economy in peril).

(Part three of a series)

Stephen Harper may have won the election, but a strong NDP opposition raises the possibility that a broader audience of Canadians will be exposed to truly progressive ideas for the first time in a generation.

That, in itself, holds change-making potential.

(Part two of a series)

Stephen Harper played the fear card and won, while the NDP made history by becoming the official Opposition.

Some pundits suggest this means Canada has become an ideologically polarized nation, but I say that's premature. While we may be on the way to becoming ideologically divided -- pushed in that direction by a hyper partisan, heavily ideological majority federal government -- the 2011 electoral results suggest something more primal is at play.

As I stated in yesterday's blog, the politics of fear can be exploitative, distracting and divisive. Here's how it affected the anti-Conservative choice in the 2011 federal election.

Election night was tough for our friends in the Liberal Party. We know what that's like. And so we can well understand why they and some of their apologists have been tempted to try to de-legitimize the key election outcomes -- the rise of the NDP to Official Opposition and a Conservative majority, realigning Canadian politics around these two national political parties -- by saying the latter only occurred as a result of vote splitting by the former.

The argument goes like this: Stephen Harper gained more than 20 seats in Ontario by increasing his vote by only five percentage points. The victory in these key ridings (so it is claimed) happened because the NDP supposedly drained votes from the Liberals, giving the Conservatives more seats.