and John Turner. The first winner of the contest was the Sudbury, Ontario-born Deirdra McCracken. McCracken, at the time of the contest, was studying political science at Université Laval in Quebec. In 2006, the show moved from CTVglobemedia to CBC Television where it was hosted by Rick Mercer and watched by one million Canadians. Representatives of Magna International, The Dominion Institute, CBC and the Fulbright Program selected four contestants to appear on the show after a cross-country university campus tour. The show aired March 2007 and was judged by four former Canadian Prime Ministers: Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark, and Paul Martin. The in-studio audience awarded first place to Quebec native Joseph Lavoie who received $50,000 and a 6 month internship with Magna International Inc. In 2007, recruitment for the next show began both in the cross-country campus tour and also online though YouTube. From YouTube videos, ten semi-finalists were selected. These semi-finalists were sent to Toronto to compete in boot camp where four finalists were chosen. CBC released boot camp footage to the public as podcasts. The 2007/2008 show aired March 23 on CBC Television and was judged by Kim Campbell, Paul Martin, John Turner, and Danny Williams. The winner was 25-year-old Metis physician Alika Lafontaine from Saskatchewan. Pam Hrick placed second, followed by Kevin Royal in third and Rahim Moloo in fourth. International Sales Bulgarian Public Broadcaster BNT has produced two series of the format with the title "Big Choice". In June 2009, the German TV Station ZDF broadcast the Show with the title "Ich kann Kanzler" The format is distributed internationally by DRG. Legal BitTorrenting On March 19, 2008, CBC announced that they were going to release a DRM-free copy of the show after the broadcast, making them the first major broadcaster in North America to officially release a prime time show using the protocol. Canadian law expert Michael Geist noted in a blog post that CBC's announcement could force "the CRTC to face mounting pressure to address net neutrality concerns." On March 23, 2008 after the broadcast, CBC posted the torrent files to the official show site. Reception was positive, but there were two main criticism: the video files were badly encoded and that Canadian ISPs were throttling BitTorrent downloads. References External links Official Website captured by Archive.org. YouTube Auditions The Next Great Prime Minister on CBC Even with all the 'crap,' ambitious young people