PunkAssBlog.com

Natalie Dee says it better than I ever could.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently launched a neat little project on Facebook called the Great Canadian Wish List. Canadian Facebook users can make a wish for the country, and other users can support that wish. Facebook automatically ranks them, and CBC News will announce the most popular wishes on July 1st, Canada’s 140th anniversary.

A lot of the wishes are exactly what you’d expect if you follow the national discourse: Most Canadians care about protecting the environment and the health care system, and, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, that hazy concept called “national unity.” Farther down the rankings are the more entertaining ones, people wishing for a tax on Baby Boomers, the ability to manipulate time, the return of the two-dollar bill, and the classic “more wishes.”

But the top of the list is disturbing: The top wish, by far, is “Abolish Abortion in Canada.” Number two is “For a spiritual revival in our nation” (and by spiritual, they mean Christian. No “Allah Akbar”s or references to indigenous faiths to be found there!). The fourth is “Restore the Traditional Definition of Marriage,” which, incidentally, is not something that can be accomplished without messing about with the Constitution.

The Facebook tallies don’t really reflect the Canadian public’s opinions. A 2004 Gallup poll showed that 54% of respondents believed that abortion was “morally acceptable”; a 2005 poll indicated that 52% of respondents wanted Canadian abortion laws to remain the same. More recently, a 2006 Leger poll found that only 34% of respondents found abortion “immoral.” Nor has theocracy traditionally gone over well here, the last election aside (and to be fair to the misguided voters of my country, Harper’s ratings only went up once he toned down some of his more extremist rhetoric). Equal marriage has been slightly more controversial—I remember reading parliamentary proceedings a few years ago, and most public petitions amounted to whining about extending civil rights to everyone—but even the most ardent homophobes tend to recognize that they’ve lost that particular battle.

On top of that, Facebook’s demographics are presumably skewed towards younger, educated users: the very segment of the population most likely to support reproductive freedoms, same-sex marriage, and religious tolerance. CBC even has a slight lefty bent, if only because conservatives usually don’t support public broadcasting.

So what’s the story here? It looks like our side got out-networked again. There’s at least one Facebook group, linked to various large Catholic groups, formulating strategies to reach as many forced-birthers as possible while knocking the pro-choice wishes down. The reality-based community, while likely numerically larger, is less organized (and perhaps apathetic; reproductive freedom in Canada has not been systematically under attack in quite the same way as it has in other countries). It seems like a trivial event to organize around, but when you realize just how influential CBC News is in terms of shaping the national discourse (don’t laugh, fellow Canadians—people do watch it), it’s a great opportunity for relatively fringe ideologues to seize the public stage.

It’ll be interesting to watch this one play out. It’s easy to shrug off (I have a feeling that by July 1st, the top wish will have something to do with Tim Horton’s), but being new to the whole Facebook phenomenon, I’m curious to see how the contest will go, and how the CBC will eventually frame the discussion.

Thanks to zingerella for drawing me deeper into Facebook’s evil clutches.