CitizenSparks: Postmedia partners with Samara Canada and Twitter to engage...
What does democracy in Canada look like? Postmedia has partnered with Samara Canada and Twitter to ask that question in the months leading up to the federal election — and we need your help to answer...
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CitizenSpark No. 1: Show us your Canada
Welcome to CitizenSparks, an election-year project that’s all about showing how real people drive Canadian democracy. From now through October, we’ll challenge you to be political with weekly sparks to...
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CitizenSpark No. 2: Your first political act
Whether it was around the dinner table or in the voting booth, every political citizen has to start somewhere. And so the second spark in our election-year project asks: What was your first political...
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CitizenSpark No. 3: What’s political near you?
This project is about putting democracy into the everyday, and that means finding politics everywhere. For our third spark we asked : What’s political near you? We asked you to take a look around at...
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CitizenSpark No. 4: Who makes democracy better?
Our politics don’t improve unless someone improves them, and this week we wanted to put some names to that campaign. The fourth spark in our election-year project asks: Who makes democracy better? In...
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CitizenSpark No. 5: What’s your debate question?
With the first debate of the election planned for Thursday, Aug. 6, we want to know: What question would you ask the party leaders? With an expected 11-week campaign and five scheduled debates, there...
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CitizenSpark No. 6: What’s the mood of your riding?
It’s official: Canada is feeling about #elxn42. As part of our ongoing project to show how real people drive democracy, we asked you to tell us the mood of your riding — and encouraged the use of...
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CitizenSpark No. 7: Your last political conversation
What we talk about when we talk about politics: Strategic voting, Conservative proposals, general dismay and, yes, Donald J. Trump. This week, as part of our ongoing project to show how real people...
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CitizenSpark No. 8: The Ballot-Box Question
In a sense, every election is a referendum. No matter who’s on the ballot, there’s one critical question that citizens are answering as they vote. Twenty days into this 78-day campaign, we wanted to...
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CitizenSpark No. 9: The Campaign in Verse
Mario Cuomo famously said you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose. This week we opted to test that axiom by asking you to sum up #elxn42 to date in verse. Haiku were encouraged, which those who...
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CitizenSpark No. 10: Promises to Break
Is a promise made during an election campaign a sacred thing, the fundamental unit of representative democracy? Or is it more of a hopeful vision, a rough plan to be adapted to reality if and when the...
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CitizenSpark No. 11: Your First Time
Young people don’t vote. That’s the self-fulfilling prophesy that gets trotted out at every election, right up there with “Campaigns matter” and “The only poll that counts is the one on election day.”...
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CitizenSpark No. 12: What Makes a Great Leader?
The CitizenSparks project is all about everyday political citizens, the millions of Canadians who don’t lead political parties but are just as committed as Justin, Stephen, Tom and Elizabeth to playing...
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CitizenSpark No. 13: Show Us A Campaign In Action
How do you run for Parliament in the year 2015? In many ways, the same way you would have run for Parliament 10, 20, or 50 years ago. Sure, this is the social media election, but as the Twitter account...
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CitizenSpark No. 14: Why do you get out and vote?
Oct. 19 is creeping closer, with the final leaders’ debate before the election in the books on Friday. This week, we wanted to know: Why do you get out and vote? But before we can answer that question,...
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CitizenSpark No. 15: What will be the talk of your Thanksgiving table before...
It’s always risky when a dinner conversation veers from “pass the gravy” to foreign policy or taxes, but with the federal election just over a week away, that’s no doubt what will be happening this...
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CitizenSpark No. 16: Don’t call it slacktivism
Maybe you’ve noticed a recent change in your friends’ social media profile pictures. Over the last few weeks on Facebook and Twitter, more and more Canadians’ faces have become obscured by bold capital...
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CitizenSpark No. 16: What rhymes with election?
Can you believe it’s over? After 11 weeks of debates, door-knocking, plot twists and hey, a few actual differences in policy, more than 17 million of us cast a ballot in this election — about 69 per...
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