I love an election. Federal, municipal, provincial, even post-secondary student unions, elections are my favourite time of the administrative term.
Elections are the moments that you see people – the voters, the corner stone of our society – getting their hands dirty with democracy for multiple weeks at a time. I know some folks who do not stand with me in that excitement. I used to be the kind of person that would cringe at the thought of having to choose a mouthpiece for the next four years. Tears would well in my eyes at the sight of a ballot, because I firmly believed that the effort I put into voting was valueless. As a young (ish) person in Canada, I felt cheated by a flawed electoral system that begged for my vote but never had the intention of representing my best interests. I felt cheated of any gratitude, so much that I would have settled for a shirt that read: “I just gave some privileged baby boomer a pension and soapbox and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
Elections are exciting to me now because they are not a sprint. There’s no reason to get to the finish line in record time. Elections aren’t even a marathon – there are still opportunities for marathons to be too fast and regrets can still happen with no recourse. I think of elections as hopscotch; a bumpy road with many steps to take, but a clear goal to visualize for the election hopefuls and voters equally.
Voters hop around the talking points and sound bites of candidates in their riding. In the Sault, we have candidates in the election that are recognizable (or at least used to be) and active in community development. We also have candidates emerging from the relative unknown and it seems difficult to get anything other than a party produced canned sound bite as a response. We have candidates who have virtually no party support but still cannot hold ground against the polished campaigns of former PR interns in Ottawa.
I want to learn more about Skip Morrison from the source, and not a copy and pasted bio from a writer in Ottawa. Finding more information on this candidate looks to be challenging for the average Googler. His official party website reads like a cover letter applying for an entry-level job. His performance in recent debates has been called “arrogant” and “unfitting of a rookie candidate”. But I give Skip credit for that. Like his party leader Tom Mulcair, he needs to express the confidence to keep up with the veteran campaigner and the community leader. If the NDP wants a chance at being successfully elected to govern, the optics of confidence masked as arrogance may be a necessary trait.
It will certainly contrast with the sense of obsequious obligation we get from our incumbent. Bryan Hayes seems to think we owe him another term. So much so that there is a noticeable lack of effort put into campaigning, much like the perception of his first term rodeo on Parliament Hill. The occasional sign on a lawn or street corner is fine, it shows that he’s engaged with some of the electorate but the lack of participation in recent Union debates has me confused. Why not try to win the votes of the main industrial resource in your riding? Especially considering his participation in the committees on the industry, it seems arrogant in a viscerally privileged way.
There’s something important to remember here – elections do not simply select your public policy paper pusher. Our job here isn’t to show who we’re voting for by wearing a certain colour or displaying a lawn sign. Our job is to show those tasked with our best interests in the direction we want to have our society take. As the deciders of their career fate, we should be free to ask those candidates their personal stances on the issues without needing to be vetted by headquarters or searched for our past party participation.
Let’s make the candidates speak without the puppet masters behind them. Let’s see if they can hold a conversation without mentioning their party but what they can do for us because we are their potential constituents, their electorate, and their hiring panel. If my vote is to have any value, I need to put the effort into getting the value of that vote. I need to learn more about these candidates and how they plan to change our society. Sure there is that pesky little “First Past the Post” system that will decide the Prime Minister and the governing party, but also the economic, social and legal future of the value of our votes.
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Speaking with the candidates directly is likely to be most worthwhile after an in depth investigation of the party they have chosen to support, that way you can check their knowledge of both the policy and platform which is in reality a box from which they will have work to represent you.
Though the NDP attempted to conceal their longstanding policy by removing it from their website earlier in the campaign the recent “Leap Manifesto” brought that agenda to light. Social media evidence of extreme left candidates expressing views on the evil of Canada’s energy sector has been supported by the plethora of NDP signatures on this statement of extremist sentiments.
CTV News reported:
Manifesto backed by NDP supporters calls for overhaul of capitalist economy
“In contrast to Mulcair’s insistence that running deficits puts an unfair economic burden on future generations, the signatories declare that “austerity — which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and health care, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations — is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.”
The signatories assert that the money to pay for the transformation they envision is readily available. All it requires is for the federal government to end fossil fuel subsidies, cut military spending and impose financial transaction taxes, increased resource royalties and higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals.”
The NDP desire to destroy Canada’s military capacity does not sit well with people of diverse backgrounds. Tarek Fatah explained:
Why Mulcair has lost my vote
During the leaders’ debate, the NDP leader quipped:
“(W)e know that a lot of the horrors that we are seeing are the direct result of the last misguided war (U.S invasion of Iraq) …”
I was stunned. Here was a man vying to be Prime Minister of Canada reading a script whose logic could have been taken straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood hymnbook.
In effect, Mulcair was saying it was the fault of America that ISIS was beheading fellow Muslims, pushing homosexuals off the roofs of buildings and making sex slaves out of captured, non-Muslim female prisoners.
Nonsense. Jihadis have been doing this since the dawn of Islam.”
This realist has the perspective of one who has been jailed for leftist views in Islamic communities and is still under threat to his life.
Neither did not take kindly to Trudeau’s dismissive response; “That’s a nonsensical question,” to CBC Milewski’s probing; “If you don’t want to bomb a group as ghastly as ISIS, when would you ever support real military action?”
Both the Liberals and the NDP want to flood Canadian communities with immigrants and have exploited every opportunity to heap shame on Canada, even ghoulishly fabricated ones such the drowning of one child with a very tenuous connection to our country. Though the media seems reluctant to give Canadians the truth, Europe is now awakening to an Islamic invasion which will indeed be “change” however unlikely it is to be for the betterment of humanity.
As a concerned, retired Canadian Taxpayer, I’m going to simplify the results of this fall’s federal election like this. Mulcair is going to fair well in Quebec and the # of NDP seats in La Belle province with reflect this. Harper will be strong in the west and gardener many of the votes west of Ontario. Now, in Ontario, justin and his liberals will feel the wrath of a very disliked wynne liberal government and thus, will not do as well as justin may think he will. So, what does that translate to in votes, at least to me. Harper’s Conservatives and Mulcair’s NDP will be close all the way to the end and one of them will form the government. You could flip a coin on who wins. justin liberal government will come in third, again. And the primary reason this will be the case is because of justin’s ineptness to convince Canadians that he is ready. Personally, I don’t believe justin will ever be ready. Stay tuned. Thursday’s French debate proved my point especially when it comes to justin’s ineptness. The next debate on foreign policy will be the icing on the cake for justin’s ineptness.