This past Monday I wasn't exactly glued to the coverage of the Canadian Federal Election, since I was too busy watching far more important things (24 and Surface if you're interested). But that didn't stop me from noticing a major shortcoming of the election coverage by all the Canadian news outfits.

There were no maps.

In a decade when a distinctive trend in North American elections is the growing power of what Americans call "the Heartland" and when rural areas enjoy disproportionate representation compared to major urban areas in national legislatures, you would think that country-wide maps showing the distribution of each party's seats would be a staple of election coverage.

However, the only maps I saw were small city maps of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, where the victorious Conservative Party won not a single seat. For all you Americans, this phenomenon is somewhat similar to having a Presidential candidate win the White House and yet lose California, New York and Texas.

Being unable to see maps of the entire country with, for example, the province of Alberta coloured completely blue, can seriously obscure a viewer's understanding of the political forces at play, and in my opinion was a big oversight by the news agencies.

(P.S. Here the Conservatives are blue and the Liberals are red, and we also have orange, light blue, green and grey just to make it interesting.)