Why Vote in the Next Election?

I had lunch with an old friend who has supported Conservative/Reform/Alliance party all his life. No more. He told me that he is so fed up with the dishonest practices of the present government that he is going to put a straight line across all squares facing candidates’ names. We had a discussion on the issue of wasting the vote. I suggested to him that being neutral is not equivalent to showing dissatisfaction; it is equivalent to being on the sidelines. If he is as unhappy as he says he is, he should vote for an opposition party preferably for the candidate who is most likely to defeat the incumbent Conservative. If he wishes to spoil the ballot he may just as well stay at home to watch his favourite program on TV and save the time and trouble of going to the polling station.

There are certain critical issues in this election on which the electorate must make their voice clear. The most important issue is the respect for democracy among the elected representatives. Rather than respect the parliament, Mr. Harper has shown his contempt for the legislative body again and again. He prorogued the parliament to avoid the no-confidence motion, defended ministers who lied to the parliament, gave deliberately false answers to questions in the parliament and the latest; according to the Auditor General, the government under his watch incurred fifty million dollars in expenses which might be illegal. All this when he was in a minority position! I dread to think what he would do if he had a clear majority and could follow whatever policies would forward his far right-wing agenda which a majority of Canadians abhors. By his shenanigans, including lying to the parliament, Mr. Harper lost the confidence of the House and in any reasonable society would have lost the confidence of the country too. There is no doubt that if the last week of our parliament had happened at the Westminster, the mother of our parliamentary system, the disgraced Prime Minister would have resigned the leadership of his party.

Canadians can argue about the justification for sending soldiers to Afghanistan and bombers to Libya but there can be no doubt that Canada has lost the respect it had among the developing countries for its fairness. Our foreign aid policy has been distorted by the short term view of our economic interests, policies in the Middle East and blinkered views on family planning. For decades Canada sent peace keepers to countries suffering from civil wars, now we send bombers. Canada used to send financial and technical aid to fight disease, draught and famine wherever the need arose. Now we look the other way if the area is out of the zone of our economic interest.

To make up for the loss of prestige in developing countries, we glory on our membership of G8 even if we have to spend a billion dollars in hosting their meeting while cutting the budget for education and social welfare. Our cities are choking, yet there are no funds for public transit but we have thirty billions for military jets to be used against the enemies we don’t have. Our government cuts GST and taxes on hugely profitable corporations, many of them foreign while professing poverty when it comes to supporting education and helping the citizens in need.

Yet another black mark on our name in the last decade is our environmental record. Mr. Harper claims to be the Energy Powerhouse of the world boasting about the reserves of oil in Oil Sands in Western Canada. To counter the environmental damage by the emissions in the extraction process, we have put all our eggs in the basket of Carbon Capture and Storage without any proof that the technology would work. We oppose the carbon tax and play all kinds of word games to show that oil extraction from sands is environmentally safe while disregarding studies proving it to be otherwise. In the process we risk the health of future generations over a vast area so that foreign investors can reap windfall profits and the Americans can quench their oil thirst. Canadians do not oppose the extraction of oil from sands per se; the general complaint is that we are doing it with reckless abandon without careful consideration of long term implications.

Last but not the least, the government that hires a convicted fraudster in a sensitive senior advisory position proposes harsh legislation to prolong longer sentences when the crime rate is declining and there is no proof of their efficacy. The prevention measures like encouraging kids to stay in school and increasing the number of police officers on the beat are disregarded and the budgets of provincial governments are strained further by additional costs of more prisons and guards. If there were a case of ideology gone berserk, this is it.

Major factors in this election are the future of democracy in Canada, our standing in the world, alignment of social and economic priorities of the next government with those of most Canadians and the future of our children and their children. There is much at stake. Vote for whoever you consider most likely to set the policies that will help you achieve your goals and under no circumstance spoil your ballot.

Three Questions:

Why is a driven personality always in the driver’s seat?

When the driver refuses to listen, is the passenger being driven to distraction?

Are the Canadian voters as stupid as our leaders think they are? We will find out on May 2.