MEDIA WATCH: World eyes on Canada

“WHAT THE F— is going on up in Canada?” read a headline on a recent story in Esquire magazine summing  up some of the reasons Canada’s epically long election campaign has made headlines around the globe.

Calling [Prime Minister]Stephen Harper an “aspiring oil sheikh,” writer Charles P. Pierce touches on the condition of Canada’s indigenous communities, the move to tighter citizenship requirements and the issue that has captured much of the world’s attention.

“Harper, of course, having learned all the wrong lessons from the Bush-Cheney-Halliburton years, has been going to Trump University this time around, making a national issue of any Canadian civil servant who wants to wear a niqab,” Pierce writes, referring to Harper’s proposed ban on Muslim face veils in the federal public sector after losing a court challenge by Pakistani immigrant Zunera Ishaq over wearing hers during a citizenship oath ceremony.

The niqab issue seems to have gotten the most widespread and varied coverage, from straight-up articles like those in France 24, the Times of Israel and Al Jazeera to Pierce’s piece. One Canadian writer for the New Yorker seemed surprised that he kind of, sort of agreed with Harper’s position.

“I come from the kind of Montreal Liberal family for whom Trudeau the Elder remains a sainted figure, and the Conservatives, in their present post-progressive state, the embodiment of a dubious Americanization of Canada,” Adam Gopnik writes. “This is part of the reason why, when the logic of a position of Harper’s makes me side even partially with him, I am inclined to think that the logic probably has something compelling in it.”

Here’s a sampling of other international media coverage.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC and the Guardian offered up sober political analysis looking at possible reasons for the fluctuating poll numbers in the final weeks of the campaign, at the advance polls over the weekend and at suburban immigrant voters.

Australia’s public broadcaster, ABC, has assigned a political reporter to blog about the election.

New York Magazine, with so much fodder in its own backyard, found Canada  political machinations interesting only when “America’s favorite Canadian politician” showed up on the campaign trail.

“Stephen Harper … tried to give his campaign some last-minute oomph today by making room for a very special guest: Rob Ford,”[the controversial coke sniffing former Toronto mayor].

Bloomberg took the expected business angle — but came up with an unexpected conclusion: “For Canada investors, Liberals prove better bet than Tories,” reads the headline on an analysis of data going back nearly 100 years.

“Stretching back to 1922 and the time of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s first term in office, stock returns have been three times higher under Liberal prime ministers than with Conservative leaders,” the article said.

Among Conservative leaders, “Harper has been among worst for stocks; Joe Clark was best.”

Russian news outlet RT focused on Canada’s pot politics, reporting on Harper’s clash with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau over the legalization of marijuana during the second French-language debate.

But perhaps the most entertaining coverage came from Russia’s Vladimir Putin-approved news outlet Sputnik.

Under the headline “Cold as Ice: All Three Major Canadian Parties Vow to be ‘Tough on Russia,’” one article accused all three major party leaders of “Russia-bashing.”

“With all three of Canada’s major political parties pledging that they would continue the Harper policy line of being ‘tough on Russia,’ it doesn’t seem that the icy relationship between the two northern neighbors will thaw any time soon, regardless of who wins the parliamentary elections next month,” the article said.

Sputnik also ran pieces about potential U.S.-style voter suppression that asked whether Canada’s elections were at risk of becoming “as corrupt” as America’s