![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe only reason that I didn't vote in the 2004 federal elections in my electoral district of Davenport is that I was in the process of moving to my new Toronto home from Kingston and couldn't figure out even if I could vote in the Kingston and the Islands electoral district. Not that it mattered, not really, since the popular incumbent Liberal candidate Peter Milliken beat the Conservative candidate almost three votes to one. Back in 2006, I had no excuse not to vote apart from sheer apathy. This year, actually, part of me hoped that I could combine apathy with difficult scheduling, but the fact that the poll today were open from 9:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night took the heart out of that excuse.
So. At a quarter to nine, I cast my vote in the gymnasium of Dovercourt Junior Public School. This year, as CBC points out, there were only eight candidates on the slate. Since I'm in a particularly skeptical mood, let me critique each candidate and their party.
All this left me with only one choice.
The beautiful thing about Canadian politics is that, with the exception of constitutional questions or referenda on Québec independence, it's fairly boring and technocratic. No, we don't have charismatic leaders like Obama, but then, we don't need charismatic leaders like Obama. This non-charismatic nature of the Canadian polity might be the root cause of voter apathy in Canada, perhaps in other democracies: If an individual's vote doesn't have direct consequences for said individual, and if things are going tolerably well, what take an active party in public life and abandon the cultivation of one's garden?
So. At a quarter to nine, I cast my vote in the gymnasium of Dovercourt Junior Public School. This year, as CBC points out, there were only eight candidates on the slate. Since I'm in a particularly skeptical mood, let me critique each candidate and their party.
- I'm sure that Simon Luisi is an upstanding man committed to the environment, but I find the very existence of the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada risible. Vote for the Green Party if you're serious in actually influencing public policy.
- There's something terribly retro about the Communist Party's Miguel Figueroa and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada's Sara Thompson. (Splitters, splitters!) By terribly," incidentally, I mean not only that it's very or extremely retro but that the communisms are stupid if not criminal ideologies. Neither was worth considering.
- Just in case there wasn't enough insanity on the ballot, there was the Canadian Action Party' Wendy Forrest. I first saw her when she appeared on The National nightly newscast, justifying her party's existence by the need to prevent the North American Union and the necessity of learning what exactly happened in the September 11th terrorist attacks.
- The Green Party of Canada's Wayne Scott was briefly appealing. The emergence of the Green Party of Canada as a credible political force is something that I support on the grounds that Canada will be a more effective democracy if it had more political parties. A vote for the Greens wouldn't have put the party into power--last time around, the 2006 candidate O'Brien got less than a tenth as many votes as Mario Silva--bit it would be a vote that would help sustain a party. That motive, I decided in the end, didn't justify my giving the party my vote.
- I voted for the New Democratic Party back in 2006, and their candidate Peter Ferreira is a man with a fairly prominent role in the community. That said, I've not been personally affected by his community work (immigration law isn't very relevant to me) and besides, I get bad vibes from his posters. (Silly me, I know, and I don't care.)
- I didn't even consider the Conservative Party of Canada's candidate Theresa Rodrigues. The Conservative Party of Canada doesn't appeal to me, not only on foreign-policy grounds but because Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an autocrat and needs to be brought down a peg, or two. Harper called this election because he thought that the Conservative Party could secure a majority. Now that ill-judged cuts to culture programs may have fatally weakened its ridings in Québec, maybe, just maybe, the party will end up with fewer seats after the election than before.
All this left me with only one choice.
- I've nothing personally against the Liberal Party of Canada's candidate Mario Silva, and I think that the Liberals have been punished enough for the sponsorship scandal. Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion is the sort of man suited to be a minister or an academic of some kind rather than as a political leader, but I'm quite sure that the knives will come out once the election is finished. I'd like the Liberal Party of Canada to become a viable challenge to the Conservatives, and I'd prefer to think of my vote as a vote of confidence and hope in that possibility nationally.
The beautiful thing about Canadian politics is that, with the exception of constitutional questions or referenda on Québec independence, it's fairly boring and technocratic. No, we don't have charismatic leaders like Obama, but then, we don't need charismatic leaders like Obama. This non-charismatic nature of the Canadian polity might be the root cause of voter apathy in Canada, perhaps in other democracies: If an individual's vote doesn't have direct consequences for said individual, and if things are going tolerably well, what take an active party in public life and abandon the cultivation of one's garden?
