It was made official today, we’re going to have a general election up here in Canada on October 14th. It’ll be fun to watch the media up here juggle coverage of the American election with our humble little voting exercise. It’s just an exercise because P.M. Stephen Harper has been a wolf in sheep’s clothing for his time in office so far. A few empty promises to do something about the environment mixed with some conservative (lower-case) “family values.” You can’t really fault the guy; he’s been really careful to keep his true feelings about most issues to himself. And that’s what we largely vote for in Canada it seems: a middle-of-the-road party that doesn’t upset-the-apple-cart and gives lip-service to our revered social programs.
But do we want to continue down this path? The election is already shaping up to be the Liberals complaining that the Conservatives broke their promise to have set election dates. And the Conservatives will argue that the Liberals have been blocking all their awesome bills in Parliament. Yawn. Why are the NDP, Bloc, and Green parties the only ones that will tackle the reality that we have some serious housekeeping to do in this country?
The healthcare we so prize isn’t practical in the 21st century. Free healthcare is an awesome idea and was fairly cheap when we were talking about old-fashion, country doctors that cost no more than their education and penicillin. But today medicine is a multi-billion dollar industry. Medical imaging machines alone cost millions of dollars and we can’t afford it. Don’t get me wrong, I am passionately in-favor of free healthcare in this country and can’t imagine a Canada without it, but we have to be realistic about it. The SARS outbreak in Toronto showed us how close our hospitals are to collapse. We are surviving because of the super-human effort that our doctors and nurses put into hospitals to keep them going. I’ve never met a nurse that didn’t pull longer shifts than I could imagine. This is a real problem and we need a real discussion about what we need to do, not more lip-service.
So the question is: who to vote for in this election? I guess I’m some sort of social-liberal-i-dunno-what. I don’t share the Conservative values, though to be sure, they aren’t as Right-winged as their Republican counter-parts to the South. So realistically that leaves me with the Liberals or the NDP for my vote.
I live in Olivia Chow’s Trinity-Spadian riding. I frankly like Olivia Chow, but with the party voting blocks in Parliament, I’m skeptical that the voice of a MP can be heard if it isn’t backed by the in-power or opposition party. So I guess I have to vote Liberal, whoever the heck is running in my riding, if only to help prevent the Conservative party from gaining a majority. My hope is that all the people that voted to punish the Paul Martin Liberals in the last election have their pound-of-flesh and are willing to support the Stephan Dion Liberals against the Conservatives.
The Conservatives have a compelling narrative this election: “Ok, so you don’t like the ‘Conservative’ party. But common, the last couple of years haven’t been that bad. By now you can’t remember any big scandals coming out of Ottawa, so we must be doing alright, right? Common, Minority governments suck. Give us a few more seats and we’ll get shit done.” And you know what, a lot of people are probably going to buy that.
Today marks the death of our 97th brave soldier in Afghanistan. I can’t begin to imagine the pain his family must feel at the death of their loved one. Whether you understand the reasons for Canada being Afghanistan or not, whether you believe in it or not, we are sending our young people into harm’s way every-single day over there. They deserve for us to make this election count despite the cynicism that so many people including myself feel about the politics in this country.
So on October 14th, let’s all get out there and vote, Canada!
