WASHINGTON — The world is watching Canada.
The major-league baseball team, a lot. The federal election, not so much.
The Toronto Blue Jays championship run has received five times more international news coverage than the federal election campaign, says a prominent media-monitoring agency.
The ballplayers have generated 15 per cent of the foreign media mentions of Canada over the last month, says Influence Communication. The politicians have generated three per cent.
The company president said that, even within Canada, the election got much less attention in its early days compared with previous, shorter campaigns.
"As with Canadian media, the international press had pretty modest interest in the election," said Jean-Francois Dumas, who said he searched 50,000 newspapers in 22 languages in 160 countries.
"In comparison, the Toronto Blue Jays generated 15 per cent of the country's media presence in foreign media."
An example of the headlines Thursday: "That Rangers-Blue Jays 7th inning may be the craziest you'll ever see," from CBS's website. SB Nation ran an item: "Every reason why Blue Jays-Rangers Game 5 was one of the best, weirdest games ever." And in a headline that barely scratches the surface of that now-notorious inning of insanity, Deadspin reported: "They Found The Blue Jays Fan Who Allegedly Threw Beer On A Baby."
As for the Canadian election, Dumas said the most-mentioned issues mentioned in foreign media are: the rise of Justin Trudeau's Liberals followed by the niqab debate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the economy.
Opposition parties have been particularly keen on drawing attention to foreign news coverage of the niqab debate — using social media to share items that criticize the Harper government for dragging Islamic veils into the campaign.
One example is a headline in The Economist.
"Canada's election ... Muslim-bashing is an effective campaign tactic," said the London newspaper. The Washington Post ran an item: "How a Muslim veil is dominating Canada's election race." The liberal-leaning Guardian of London has been especially scathing with headlines like, "Canada's real barbarism? Stephen Harper’s dismembering of the country."
An Esquire writer accused the Canadian government of opening a Pandora's box of xenophobia.
There's been scant attention to how Canadian voters have responded to issue.
Contrary to the political analysis of Economist headline-writers, the two parties driving the niqab conversation are trailing in Quebec; the last government to make religious clothing a campaign issue got clobbered in a Quebec provincial election and multiple polls now suggest the Conservatives have slipped into second place nationally, behind the Liberals.
Relatively few foreigners are into that horse-race conversation.
Even at the White House, when they talked about Canada on Thursday it wasn't about the election. At the daily press briefing, they certainly weren't discussing the fate of parties seeking seats in the Toronto region. They were talking about the Jays.
"Quite a ball game last night," said President Barack Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest.
He's a devout Kansas City Royals fan. And much less a fan of firebrand conservative Sen. Ted Cruz. Earnest used the impending Jays-Royals series to poke fun at the Canadian-born Republican presidential candidate.
"(The Royals are) ready to take on Ted Cruz's other hometown team — the Toronto Blue Jays — next," Earnest joked. "If Sen. Cruz would like to make a bet with me about our respective home town teams, they know how to track me down."
