• Nouvelle Domesticity: The late Liberal government legalized same-sex marriage, but the new PM opposes it, if only because of the unbearable American gay-marriage tourists flooding our cities. (Gay Americans, recognized here as an oppressed class, can expect to be greeted with filial embraces. But they're still Americans, so we'll also be fumbling around in vain for the volume knob.)

Harper is committed to holding a parliamentary vote on the issue; if his side wins, "civil unions" will replace "same-sex marriages," but existing gay marriages and legal privileges for homosexual couples would still be respected. Because he's outnumbered in the House by liberals and socialists, he's unlikely to win...

• Cheap (in Every Sense of the Word) Healthcare: The Conservatives have raised painful moral questions about a Medicare system in which all Canadian politicians profess undying pride until the day they get cancer and haul themselves across the border to the Mayo Clinic. Nonetheless, under our Constitution, healthcare regulation is handled at the provincial level, not federally. Harper may use his control of tax flows to discourage Liberal suppression of private medicine, but he has pledged to protect the monumental social contract under which every sick Canadian, rich or poor, can be stonewalled, misdiagnosed and exposed to hospital infections in any part of our great land...