| Joe Clark was right when he said recently: "I think there's a very dismal choice for Canadians right now. I think both so-called national parties have let the public down."
What are before the public as the only choices for prime minister, at least according to the grey old mass media, are so close to being the worst choices that it almost makes one wonder why you should vote.
But don’t harbour that thought for long. All of the reasons to avoid voting, at their heart, are really just excuses for self-absorption. You should vote, and if you don’t like what you see in the Liberals and Conservatives, you should take a serious look at your local candidates and the other so-called fringe political parties.
There has never been a time when there have been more accessible sources of information from which to become informed on the issues, so get out of that self-induced cave and inform yourself. Here’s a start:
As Clark said, "the Liberal prime minister would make a better leader for the country than Conservative Stephen Harper – but that neither one is a great choice."
In considering the two alleged frontrunners, what’s behind both the Liberals’ Paul Martin and the Conservatives’ Stephen Harper should scare you at least to the point of questioning local candidates when they come to your door, which, not incidentally, can also help motivate you to leave that cave and find the real alternatives that exist.
The two frontrunners are either manufacturers of mistruths, use the rearview mirrors of their campaign buses to come up with their future vision of Canada, or are continually trying to distance themselves from what they don’t agree with or don’t want us to know about.
Martin will not tell us how it’s possible that, as finance minister and senior minister from Quebec, he managed to stay in the dark about the sponsorship scandal. Martin won’t tell us how, as finance minister, he could allow the gun registry to become such a fiasco, despite it being something the majority of Canadians want.
Martin will not tell us how he could be the finance minister and break his promise of cutting out the GST, and then stand up in the current campaign and tell us he will quit if he breaks his promises.
Martin will not tell us how he could be the finance minister during the Chrétien years and still want us to believe him when he promises to reform Canada’s democratic system.
Then there is Harper.
Clark said, "In a sense, people are so enraged at the Liberal government, that they're giving Stephen Harper and his government a bye. They should take a look at what he proposes." Clark is, again, correct.
Harper was part of the professed "Gang of Six," who penned the so-called "firewall" letter in 2001 to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein that called for Alberta to draw its collective head into its shell and keep all of its money to itself.
Martin has been using a scare tactic talking about Harper’s secret codes, but Harper’s 19th-century thinking is no secret. He has never reversed his beliefs outlined in the firewall letter, even when given the chance during his Conservative party leadership acceptance speech.
In fact, at that time, he said: "we have to reach out to all regions of the country." So should there be a firewall or not? Is this an idea he still believes in or not?
His selective memory even stretches to the war in Iraq. Today, Harper denies supporting sending Canadian troops to the war, despite his party’s official position, his comments, the words of his party’s foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day, and the opposition of most Canadians to the war. When he was recently showed a line from an official news release from the Opposition during the lead-up to the war that said, "Canadian Troops Must Join Allies in Gulf," Harper said he did not want to revisit that.
Harper seems to think that those of us against the war in Iraq are anti-American or are among the left wing in Canada. Why does being pro-Canadian mean we are anti-American or part of some left-wing fringe? Does that mean if we are Canadian we must be pro-American?
Harper has also talked about making political and legal changes to the way things are done in Canada, and even make changes to the Constitution, such as Senate reform and the rights of prisoners to vote. One has to wonder why he thinks he can make these specific changes when even former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney failed and has said, "you cannot cherry pick Constitution issues," to change.
The question that all should ask, if Harper is prepared to ignore the Constitution and has little respect for the Charter of Rights, is: what else is he prepared to act on unilaterally if it is not allowed by the Constitution? Will he extinguish prisoner voter rights? Will he extinguish abortion rights in Canada? What part of the Charter of Rights does he want to get rid of?
He will not tell us how he can increase spending on health care, the armed forces, cut government spending and cut taxes all while reducing the government debt in some sort of debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio scheme, with no stated plan or amount. What government programs will they eliminate to cover the costs of their promises and cut the government debt?
These are the questions you should ask those Liberal and Conservative candidates when they come knocking on your door. And if you don’t like the answer, go talk to the Green Party, the NDP, or the local independent candidate. You really have no excuse for not voting. Take part in your life. |
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