Last night Canadians elected a majority Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I spent most of the day leading up to that vote working for a Conservative candidate, including several hours as a scrutineer at one of the local polling stations.

After the count and the parties were over, I came home and switched on Twitter and Facebook to catch up on what I'd missed from my friends and associates. And what I found online was far, far removed from what I'd experienced all day.

There were people ranting about the results, threatening to leave the country before they were carted off to re-education camps. Others predicted the end of universal health care and an open season on abortion clinics. Others bemoaned the low 60% voter turnout, the alienation of Youth and the ignorance of various and sundry for choosing the MPs they chose.

For the most part, they aped the political panels and pundits and pollsters who have dominated our media for the last five weeks, preaching doom, building partisan niches and otherwise clawing through the entrails of what Canadians must feel in their guts.

In the end, it turned out most of those opinions were more than a little off the mark. But that didn't matter, the need to demonize and/or have a tantrum because you didn't get your way took precedence.

Among the most prominent in the Twitterverse was filmmaker and activist Michael Moore, a guy I greatly admire no matter how much we may disagree from time to time.

It was all I could do not to go all George C. Scott in the opening desert battle scenes of "Patton" on Mr. Moore's prestigious behind and scream, "You sonovabitch, I read your book!".

Because in the opening chapters of "Stupid White Men", Michael Moore tells you everything you need to know about running and winning a political campaign.

And if you want my opinion, that's all that happened yesterday.

You win elections by listening to people, by responding to what are legitimate needs and by proving that you'll do what you said you would do.

Many may not like what the minority Conservative government did over the last few years. But there was no hidden agenda. They were clear about what they stood for and they did exactly what they said they were going to do.

In 2008, I worked for my local candidate in Newmarket-Aurora, Lois Brown. Lois is one of the nicest people you could meet. Smart, funny and hard working. But even her own party didn't think she had much of a chance.

Yet she won by 6,000 votes. And after two years of continuing to work hard, she increased her vote last night to win by 18,000 votes. That doesn't happen unless people come to realize the person they're interacting with is not what the chattering classes would prefer they believe.

For all the social media whining about voter turnout, the polling station where I worked yesterday registered 300 new voters. And that's 10 polls in a riding with more than 250. Many of those choosing to exercise their franchise for the first time were young, encouraged to become engaged by Rick Mercer, social media and vote mobs.

A lot of them eyed me cautiously, wondering what a guy wearing a Conservative badge was doing hanging around as they signed up. They clearly weren't going to vote for my guy. I was the enemy.

In fact, late in the day, as I stood in the parking lot making some calls, a group of them came out of the poll and walked past.

"Hey guys," I said, "Thanks for voting."

"Don't look so happy!" One of them said, "None of us voted for you fucks!"

I shrugged. "Why would I have a problem with you voting for what's in your own best interest." I replied, "I'm not a socialist."

One of his buddies chuckled and glanced back at me thoughtfully as they left.

Next time out, I'm thinking he might actually give his vote a little more thought.

The candidate I was working for lost last night. To be frank, he deserved to lose. Working for him wasn't my idea. Somebody else thought he could use my help and sometimes Life renders you without choice. You get assigned to the Russian Front or to write an episode of "Little Mosque on the Prairie". All you can do is suck it up and do your best.

But he lost because like so many he was less concerned with the people he was being elected to serve than by the process of making the right impression and following the media scenario. The young don't vote. Everybody knows my opponent is a joke. Old ladies in retirement homes have been carrying me for years.  They won't change now.

He was wrong.

You win elections by engaging people and you keep the job by proving yourself to them. Meanwhile, the chattering classes are mostly concerned with chatter.

I don't take a lot of the venom spewed against Stephen Harper and those who chose not to vote seriously. Most in my Twitter feed come from the Toronto Arts Community where few will stand up for their own industry let alone actually get out and engage potential voters or advocate in favor of mandatory voting or to abolish the "first past the post" system.

No matter what I say or do, their chattering will continue -- until they too finally decide to put their own skin in the game.

But if any of them have read this far, and before they get back to tweeting and updating their facebook status, I hope they take a moment to listen to what their Prime Minister actually said last night -- understanding that he doesn't really have to care what they think of him for the next few years. He doesn't need to hope he can make them like him anymore. He's done with currying favor.

But unlike them, he hasn't given up on trying…

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I've always felt that the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs must be the hardest to play. The emotional high of just making it into the big show is over. That'll come back in Round Three for the conference championship when it's down to two teams. And it'll definitely be there for the finals.

But in Round Two, the thrill has worn off. The adrenalin is mostly helping stave off the pain from bruises that won't get a chance to even start healing for four more weeks. And everything about your team and your game that is less than perfect starts to show.

I've always equated the Second Round with the Second Night of a theatrical run. Opening night is all nervous energy and the excitement of finally getting the beast on its feet. Second nights are notoriously where things screw up and you realize that you need to stay on top of your game or it'll slide away altogether.

Similarly, down there on the ice, skills once taken for granted don't seem to come as easy. Points leaders don't score. Goalies brain cramp. Grinders catch the rare opportunity to capitalize on a mistake.

Tempers fray. Discipline hiccups. You realize just how hard winning this thing is going to be and wonder if you really have what it takes.

I realize we've all got a busy day ahead. There's clearly a feeling that some small measure of evil is gone from the world. But depending on your partisan commitment, there's maybe a worry that the "X" you Canadians put on you ballot today might just allow some imperfection to return or remain.

Whatever your position on the political spectrum, it's paramount that you vote today.

Win or lose, standing up for what you believe is always noted and taken to heart by both the victor and the vanquished. And whether or not you agree with the final decision or not, your fellow citizens have spoken in the right way to change or continue how things are done, so let's all accept their wisdom and move on.

The wisest poolies as we near the halfway point appear to be:

Mr. Pascoe. Now leading by two points.

Mr.Stubinski. Now alone in second.

Mr. House. Now alone in third.

Oh -- and look who's up a notch to sit all by hisself in 4th!

Well handled, Sir! Well handled.

See you all on Friday.

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Over the coming weeks, minions employed by our Arts Bureaucracies will meet with "industry stakeholders" as part of Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Media Fund's strategy of selling new ways to justify the continued subsidization of Canadian film.

It's already obvious to anyone paying attention that Canadian movies don't do squat at the box office. There may be good reasons for that, legitimate problems within the system that prevent Canadian filmmakers from finding a mass local audience.

But nobody who works for any of the government departments involved in film funding is interested in unearthing those. In fact, what they'd really like to do is bury them further by measuring success in a whole different way instead.

One of the "solutions" offered is how well Canadian films do at film festivals. And in truth, you can't open a Canadian newspaper between the time the NHL playoffs end and the first puck drop of the following season without seeing a puff piece about some Maple Bud being gushed over at some film fest, either foreign or domestic, for their "remarkable" film.

Said film will, no matter how remarkable, likely never find a local distribution deal nor be seen by anyone if it does.

And the sad fact is, not many people probably saw its festival screening in the first place.

I've travelled to a lot of film festivals, been a patron and even on the jury of a couple. And anyone who has done the same can confirm that even if your film plays any festival's largest venue and is re-screened because of audience demand, it will be seen by three or four thousand people at the most.

And most of the titles in most film festivals are seen by a few hundred at best.

That's a fraction of those who see the short films and snippets I post here each Sunday. And I'm a long way from being Youtube or The Huffington Post.

Last year, Andrew Allen, who operates a site I frequently poach from, "Short of the Week" , shot his own short, "The Thomas Beale Cipher", with creative partner Jason Sondhi and then charted how it fared at film festivals compared with the response it garnered online.

His findings are reflected in the illustration below.

In other words, online exposure of his film had a vastly more positive effect on both finding an audience and forwarding the filmmaker's agenda of making a profit and being in a position to do his next film.

To quote Allen, "The biggest thing I learned is that giving something away to earn people’s trust and build a fan base makes selling future creations much much easier—be it a feature film, web series, or even merchandise."

Allen details his experiences here.

Of course, there are a lot of reasons that film bureaucrats would prefer to use film festivals as the measuring stick for Canadian cinematic success. For openers, it allows them to continue to fund the kind of movies they like and audiences do not. There are the perks of travel, sponsorship freebies and after-party goodie bags. With luck there's an open bar for "festival supporters" and the chance to rub shoulders with Claude Chabrol's camera assistant.

But mostly, there's that "bread and circuses" opportunity for local filmmakers to network, attend seminars and see a couple of films no one else will ever see and then feel they are actually a part of an industry -- when they're not.

As any Roman Emporer knew, people who feel part of the pageant are less likely to rise up against it.

Measuring a film's success by asking the hundreds of bloggers like me to do a head count also doesn't make a lot of sense. Our job is simply to introduce you to the work and help build its word of mouth.

No matter how beloved any artistic product is, the one who made it needs more than a thumbs up or pat on the back to survive and move on to making what comes next.

In the beginning, that's where Arts subsidies helped. But, at least in Canada, they seem to have evolved into a system whose administrators need to be supported first; a bureaucracy which strives to justify its own existence rather than making sure our artists achieve (at least) subsistence.

It's no mystery that accomplishing the latter would assure the former. What confuses Canadian artists is why deciphering that is so difficult for some.

It's certainly easier than breaking the code that Thomas Beale created.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

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