John Oliver risks jail time to stop Harper

John Oliver wants to tell Canadians not to vote for Stephen Harper — and he's willing to go to jail to do it.

"You think I'm scared of six months in Canadian prison?" he said on election eve on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.”

Oliver is referring to a law that prohibits anyone who lives outside Canada from telling Canadians how to vote. Anyone violating the law could face a $5.000 fine, a six-month jail term or both.

"I simply can't imagine a better way to spend $5,000 Canadian dollars," Oliver added.

The Internet was buzzing Monday morning over the 20-minute segment in which Oliver gives Americans a primer on the election, starting with how this campaign has been one of the longest in the country’s history.

“Thinking 78 days is a long campaign is absolutely adorable,” he says. “It’s like a woman who has only ever seen one penis saying, ‘That’s the longest one ever. There couldn’t possibly be one longer than that.’”

Oliver explains how our electoral system relies on the number of MPs elected from each party, and how that makes the local races significant, pointing out that Conservative candidate Jerry Bance dropped out of the race after he was caught peeing into a mug while on an appliance repair service call, and that NDP candidate Alex Johnstone made a joke about Auschwitz, then justified it by saying she didn’t know what Auschwitz was.

Oliver runs through the key platform items of the three main parties and gives equal video time to clips demonstrating the awkwardness of all three leaders.

But then he takes aim squarely at Harper.

On the Conservative leader calling marijuana “infinitely worse” than tobacco, Oliver says, “Are you high?”

On the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, Oliver says Harper is “pandering to Islamaphobes,” and shows a clip of Harper, during a French-language debate, saying he would never tell his daughter to cover her face because she was a woman.

“If Stephen Harper’s daughter is covering her face, it’s probably because she understandably does not want to be seen in public with Stephen f------ Harper,” Oliver said.

And the final jab: “Picture your next-door neighbour — you may not be great friends with her, but you’d be sad if she started dating a complete and utter d---head.”

It’s enough to make Oliver violate Section 331 of the Canada Elections Act, which states “No person who does not reside in Canada shall … induce electors to … vote for or refrain from voting for a particular candidate.”

And to drive the message home “in the most Canadian way possible,” he brings out a beaver playing “Sweet Caroline” on the keyboard, a moose getting a colonoscopy “thanks to Canada’s single-payer health system,” and Mike Myers dressed as a Mountie and riding a snowplow.

The Canada’s Walk of Fame honoree has lived in the States for many years but retains his Canadian citizenship.

“I love Canada, but the fact that it has a law banning outsiders from telling Canadians how to vote is one of the least Canadian things possible,” Myers said. “Oh – and don’t vote for Harper.”

While Oliver stopped short of endorsing a specific candidate, other international celebrities did not.

“A wave at my Canadian friends... Could we have another Trudeau please?” John Cleese tweeted on Friday.

Earlier this month, comedian Sarah Silverman endorsed both a party and a candidate: “Kudos to @ThomasMulcair 4 supporting a woman's right to wear what she wants w/out discrimination #NDP And VOTE 4 MIRA ORECK! #VanGran,” she tweeted on Oct. 4.

Several famous Canadian expats like Pamela Anderson, Wayne Gretzky and Donald Sutherland — all of them disqualified from voting because they’ve lived outside the country for more than five years — have made their picks known, as well, as reported by CBC.

But the government won’t be collecting those fines or putting the outspoken celebrities behind bars.

The Elections Act clause, subtitled Non-interference by Foreigners, does not prohibit anyone from expressing an opinion, The Canadian Press reported.

"To induce there must be a tangible thing offered,” Elections Canada spokesman John Enright told CP. “A personal view is not inducement.”