Tuesday 14 October 2008

Well, we still have a country, barely!

So what does it all mean?

We have a prime minister who broke the law (his own) because he thought he could get a majority government to implement his hidden neo-conservative agenda. It cost us all $300,000,000 and we're no farther ahead. The first thing Elections Canada should do, is to send the Conservative party a bill for that amount.
Harper wanted to be Darth Vader, instead he's the same clown who broke most of the promises he made in the last election and who lied every time he opened his mouth during this election campaign (something he learned not only from the Bush Republicans, but also from Josef Goebbels, who said "the bigger the lies, the easier it is to get people to believe them").

So, what we've learned from this election is just how stupid and ignorant millions of Canadians really are. I'm not so much speaking of the people who voted Tory ("don't bother me with the facts, my mind's made up"), but more so of the people who voted NDP and Green. It's always been self-evident that to defeat Harper, progressive Canadians would have to vote Liberal. It's sad to see that Canada has elected a government whose basic principle is "the big lie", but it's even sadder that so many Canadians are so ignorant that they can't tell the difference between lies and the truth.

Just how stupid many voters are is clearly demonstrated in my riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands on Vancouver Island, where nearly 4,000 people voted for an NDP candidate who had withdrawn from the election for ethical reasons. This gave the victory to Gary Lunn, one of the weakest Tory MPs, who managed to win a 2,600 seat plurality as a result.

We end up with Stephen Harper again, the leader of the neo-conservative party, whose one objective is power, personal power, which he's pursued relentlessly for years. To get it he will say whatever he thinks will get him votes in some part of the country. And people fall for that. What he says has nothing to do with what he believes in. His aim is to win so that he can force his neo-conservative policies on the country no matter what the cost. Of course, thankfully he can't do that for now, because he didn't get his majority!

The New Democrats demonstrate with every word they utter that they're not ready for prime time. One hears clichés about family, middle class and jobs, but they have no workable policies that can be implemented in real life without causing economic chaos.

The Liberals have the right policies; the switch to an environmentally progressive economy has worked well in all European countries that have implemented it, foremost of all Germany. Germany is a leader in green technology development and implementation and has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in new emerging industries, all while facing the same problems with conventional jobs fleeing to developing countries as we do. But the Liberal policies were misrepresented not only by Harper, but also by the conservative media, like CTV which has been shilling for the Tories for months. Sadly, the party seemed unable to convince enough Canadians of the validity of their policies. And among English Canadians, I also sensed some residual anti-French, anti-Catholic and anti-intellectual sentiment that still lingers just below the surface and worked against the Liberal leader.

The fact that only 59% of eligible voters actually bothered to vote shows how disgusted many of us are with the behaviour of many politicians, particularly on the far right. And the fact that vote percentages among the parties changed only very slightly but that so many seats changed parties shows how urgent it is that we change to a more representative system of elections, i.e. a version of proportional representation, to give people the sense that their votes, and which party they vote for, will actually count.

Well, Stéphane Dion will soon be gone as Liberal leader. His fate demonstrates that honesty, integrity, and vision alone are not enough to win an election in Canada. Any empty-headed showman can persuade those unwilling or unable to think for themselves to give him their votes. Oh, Canada!

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