John Oliver and Mike Myers Lampoon Canada’s Elections on Last Week Tonight

The Internet was buzzing Monday morning over the 20-minute segment in which Oliver gives Americans a primer on the election, starting with how this campaign has been one of the longest in the country’s history.

Oliver cringed: “Ouch. Emotional intelligence”.

“This chronicling of the way in which Stephen Harper has frustrated and damaged democratic activity and governance had a real resonance with the voters, and in that way, helped to strengthen the opposition pride whether it’s Liberal or NDP, and it helped to doom Stephen Harper”. That’s the kind of made-up quality you might find on a report card from a Montessori school: “‘Well done, Zayden, you got a squirrel on emotional intelligence'”. “Where there is banality, there is evil. Oh, and don’t vote for Stephen Harper”. That’s an issue because the noted conservative has championed & passed legislation weakening the country’s healthcare system, criminalizing marijuana despite medical proof citing its relative health when in comparison with tobacco, & “pandering to”. The niqab debate became a hot-button issue after the Conservative government sought a stay for a Federal Court of Appeal decision that granted Zunera Ishaq, a Muslim woman, the right to wear a niqab while swearing the oath of citizenship. “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”.

The Raging Grannies are a loose-knit collective of musically and politically minded seniors with chapters across Canada and the U.S. They started popping up in the late ’80s after a group of older women got fed up with the ageism and sexism that they found in other activist groups and launched their own peaceful protest against U.S. Navy warships in Victoria, B.C. numerous Canadian chapters have taken on Harper during his reign, taking him to task for pension-related concerns, his cuts to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), awful environmental record, and generally sinister behavior.

To weasel his way around this, Oliver introduced actor Mike Myers as a Canadian Mountie riding a Canadian flag-draped snowplow.

If that didn’t convince the audience, Oliver showed video of Stephen Harper’s freakish old man cover band, the Van Cats, tragically crucifying Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. Stephen Harper doesn’t care about black people. Myers: “And so I think that the party that wins the most seats should form the government”.