October
02
A brief political rant
I will be plain. We’ve reached the point where voting for the Conservative Party of Canada is an immoral act.
Instead of appealing to our better natures – instead of invoking the once-Canadian values like inclusion, fairness and compromise – Harper and his cabal have chosen to appeal to the worst of us. This is their strategy. Beneath his blue tent squirm the fearful, the greedy, the xenophobic, the small-minded and the knowledge-averse. Nobody else is there.
How little our Prime Minister must think of us. How foolish and easily manipulated he believes us to be.
Because I will be out of the country on election day, I voted last week. I cast a ballot for Kent Hehr, the Liberal Party candidate in my riding. I like Kent. He seems a good fellow and his campaign sign stands on my lawn. But let me be clear: the Liberal Party in general does not inspire me. As much as Trudeau has impressed me during this campaign, I oppose his party’s positions on several issues, such as Bill C-51, and find the Liberal stance on the Israel-Palestinian issue almost as disappointing as the ruling Conservatives.
The main reason I voted for Kent is because he is the candidate most likely to unseat Conservative Joan Crockatt – Calgary’s most embarrassing MP since Rob Anders. I voted for Kent because a victory for him means the Conservatives are one seat closer to being tossed out. I voted for Kent because it is the only thing I can do to end the nightmare.
In recent elections, I cast ballots for Naheed Nenshi and Chris Turner. I felt pleasure marking my X beside their names because I was voting for something. Those candidates represented the city and country I wanted to live in. Last week I voted against something. It gave me little pleasure, but at least I know I did the moral thing.
I am a better person than Harper wants me to be.
Elsewhere 
I agree 100%.
You also likely voted for Premier Notely’s NDP Gov’t in Alberta. Good luck Alberta. You just proved how dumb you really are. And you testify you voted for the Liberal’s while holding your nose. You must be one of the progressive types!!
Hey Brian, don’t post comments on a professional writer’s blog if you can’t spell. Moron.
You sound like a real peach, one of those butt-hurt whiners whose party didn’t get in at the last provincial election. How loud will you cry when Harper gets tossed?
By your comment you are not from Alberta. So who are you to tell us what is best for our province? That is for us to decide. That’s called democracy. And letting a party sit in office for 40 years is what is dumb. Even if the province switches back to Conservative at the next election, the Cons will have been reminded for the first time in 40 years that they need to be accountable. Care to elaborate on why voting the NDP is dumb? I imagine you’ll throw out the typical conservative fear mongering of TAXS (oh no)! Yet the NDP’s tax platform is lower than that of Ralph Klein’s. I’m at my wits end for Conservative voters who refuse to educate themselves with the evidence in front of their face!
Idiot. He must not live in Ontario. Harper lowers taxes and helps out the middle class by keeping industry around meanwhile Ontario’s liberals are robbing, lying and screwing us in every way possible. literally.
Idiot…..????? Spoken like a true straight-jacketed primitive ideological so-called conservative. Lower taxes is not what any civilized society would implement to take care of its citizens nor to keep industry around.
Calling someone an idiot while being led to a corporate, oligarchical, non-democratic society….
how exactly is Harper “keeping industry around”? Do you have some specific examples in mind with, you know, evidence?
Harper has kept industry around???????????? What planet are you from? His free trade agenda is more about serving corporate and oligarchical investors than about trading. You should spend more time reading and less time putting your foot in your mouth.
“Literally”? My family lives (and works, despite the fact that the Liberals have apparently taken away all of the jobs) in Ontario. No government representatives have come on their door offering sexual favours. Although I’m sure that if the Conservatives thought that that would save their asses in this election, that would be their next set of campaign ads.
You are entitled to your opinion.. But it’s really all you have given.. if you like debt and tax you are voting for the right party… If your single issue is the sum of all the bad that Harper as done you won’t sway my vote (that’s what you are trying to do right) Why don’t you bring up what is happening in the rest of the world. You’ve had the opportunity to travel all over the world (on a writers pay???) There are bad things happening out there we can ignore them or not…
If you don’t find “the sum of all the bad that Harper has done” a good enough reason to vote against him, if this bad is counteracted in your mind by absurd fictions about debt and taxes, then you are have a certain disconnection from reality. The bad things happening in the world do not justify support for Dear Leader.
Brother, I’ve voted for “the option that sucks the least” in every Federal and Ontario provincial election since 1988. Usually with little actual enthusiasm. Anyone who needs to be “inspired” by a party to actually make the effort to vote is missing the point – unless he’s so disgusted with the party that s/he’s mentally coupled with that he can’t vote for them and couldn’t care less as to which of the alternatives comes out of the wash.
Oops, sorry for the typo I meant to use “s/he” both times above.
I’m voting strategically for Kent as well Marcello- not with my nose held at all. He was a fantastic, passionate MLA and will be a similarly fantastic, RESPONSIVE MP.
If you look through the eyes of Conservative values as represented by Mr. Harper, you likely see someone worth returning to office. That is obviously a subjective point of view. Many Canadians hold different values and will support other parties as Marcello did. I commend his courage in sharing his insights. I become concerned when a Winnipeg South Conservative candidate takes her talking points to the level of publicly listing, in McCarthyesque fashion, a list of opponents that do not support present foreign policy as if it is a list of “un-Canadian” activities. That is not a debate over policy but a political witch hunt. It does come back to ethics and morals regardless of policy differences.
Perhaps if we had a responsible media that talked about real issues as they really are, and perhaps if we had representational voting rather than first past the post we as citizens could actually make a difference. Until then, expect widespread ignorance of the issues and apathy toward elections
At the end of the day, telling people that a vote is immoral flies in the face of the very democracy that let you post such crap. You can debate the pros and cons of the different parties and hold whatever opinion you wish, but just because you’re not voting for them does not make the people who do guilty of an immoral act or make them any or all of the other degrading remarks you mentioned about Conservatives.
I could not disagree more.
InOttawa, since everyone can vote as they see right, why does it fly in the face of democracy? You have a sound right to call my opinions ex. idiotic, absurd, outlandish, and/or immoral as I have the same right to do to yours. You do know if I say the Conservative Party is immoral by natural extension it would be implied that voting for would be as well. In my opinion, Harper’s morals right now are being sacrificed for electoral gains thus a vote for, to me, is immoral.
Thank you for your excellent words. Good luck to all of us who still value Canada.
Well said, Mr. Marcello. Sharing.
I’m voting the same way. Isn’t there a Anyone But Harper service that helps coordinate NDP/Liberal voting to make sure the Conservative candidate doesn’t get in? I consider a vote for Harper to be borderline treasonous considering how he has treated Ontario. Our local representative, Truppe, could never be found for any of the plant closures.
Leadnow.ca is an organization that takes local community based polls and provides much more accurate information than national polls…..
This website provides excellent information on strategic voting….something we all have to do if we want to change this government.
You can look at your own region and find out which candidate has the best chance of beating the Conservative candidate.
Please check out vote swapping 2015 on FB and at their site http://www.VoteSwapping.ca
This is Canada today:
The nation’s unemployed are pleased to hear that the main topic of political conversation will be about whether a very small minority of women have a religious right to cover their faces with a religious garb during a citizenship ceremony for yet another time.
“This will definitely determine who I vote for,” said Serge Dumont, an out-of-work aerospace engineer who has been looking for work for the past 3 months. “It’s important that this issue be brought up again and again until my EI runs out.”
Katie Duprée, a recent master’s graduate and single mother who has not been able to find a stable job, was enthused politicians and online commentators, have been arguing about a topic that hasn’t affected her in the slightest.
“I used to be really angry and sad about the struggles to pay for groceries to feed my children,” explained Duprée. “But the niqab has given me something else to be sad and angry about.”
The unemployed were not the only ones glad to hear the leaders talk about a wedge issue they haven’t even heard of until last week.
“I sure hope this debate will go on forever,” said Julie St-Henri, a senior who can’t afford her prescription drugs.
According to sources, many First Nations communities are no longer concerned about access to clean drinking water and instead have focused all of their attention on a woman’s right to wear a piece of fabric while pledging allegiance to the Queen who lives in England.
The Beaverton. Yes. This was a brilliant piece of satire. It definitely punches up throwing a spotlight on the absurd Conservative campaign strategy and the MSM’s obsession on reporting it.
Here, here!
The words I’ve been shouting to all corners, but much more elegantly expressed.
Strongly agree with the author. As a Canadian-born descendant of British born immigrants, who naturalized Canadian after their arrival in 1958, I note quite a few things about this election. Firstly the level of debate among the politicians is not at all worthy of a democracy. In 1986, I left Canada and have lived in Britain, The Netherlands, Germany and now France, since 1995. All these countries feature hothouse politics – the issues are debated passionately and a wide spectrum of political beliefs participate. The press is quite independent (this can be improved upon of course). But note this – due to my residence in France, I cannot vote in this election. When I mention this to my French friends, they find this shocking, that a Canadian-born national cannot vote in his country’s election. But not so my Canadian friends. A recent visit this summer disabused me – everyone I met seemed to think it normal that non-resident Canadians be denied the vote. I also, because of my parents, have double nationality – British/Canadian. The idea that this government legislates that I could be denied nationality from my birthright nation, that in certain circumstances the Canadian government could decree, outside the courts, that my nationality be restricted to Britain, where I was not born, is an obscenity. Yet again my Canadian friends didn’t feel this way, pointing out to me that the legislation wasn’t intended to penalize me. And that I was being overly worried for nothing. Recently I read of a politician who was quoted saying a convicted terrorist had “forfeited” his right to his Canadian nationality due to the nature of his crimes. I find this kind of language offensive and in total contradiction to the modern principles that have guided our democracies and our laws ever since we conceded that religion and politics should not mix. The immorality under discussion is precisely this point. By disguising his religious views of another age, the incumbant Prime Minister is slowing instauring feudalism. It is this terrifying erosion of the social gains for which Canada was revered, gains based upon the recognition of the rights of man and women as it was so cleverly articulated for us by the brilliant statesmen and women upon whose ideals we have our built our democracies, it is this betrayal that strikes me so much in the current Canadian political climate. And the silence of the conventional press. And the inarticulateness of the political opposition. And I am left to ponder – has Canada really become a country that deserves Mr. Harper’s Reform Party fundamentalism disguised as Conservatism?
Precisely. It rankles me when I hear the Conservative Party of Canada referred to as “Tories.” They are anything but.
Well said, Marcello. As many of the comments prove, the Harper Tories are well loved by trolls but few others.
Thanks for saying what I have tried to say in other media and not as well as you have! I would like to point out that the “Conservative Party of Canada” is not the Progressive Conservative party of George Grant, Joe Clark, Flora McDonald, or even Diefenbaker. It is a right wing neo-liberal party that has as its political agenda the destruction of any form of social democracy, the xenophobic policies of a Euro-centric (perhaps just Anglo-Saxon) “culture,” and the dictatorship of a “(free?)market (we do need to ask questions about the use of that word) economy” over the commonwealth of persons that make up this geographically challenged nation. Sorry, I need to blather somewhere…. Just hear my thanks in the above for what you have written!
Daniel Bogert-O’Brien
Sadly- it doesn’t seem that the leadership of the NDP is ready to take the gloves off the way you have.
Unless te NDP does take its gloves off then rants like yours (and mine if I decided to do one) are a waste of air.
I was just looking at an article about a woman in a Niqab in Toronto being assaulted. Since the 1990’s we have been trying to get rid of bullying in our school system, and our Prime Minister seems to think becoming a bully is the way to win an election. Please Canada, do not reward such despicable behaviour.
Harper’s number to call to report a “barbaric act” (read Muslim act) is reminiscent of the Nazis’ request that Germans report Jewish neighbours. To resort to this to win an election is immoral.
Well said…Never in my 65 years have I seen such a skilled and deceptiove political manipulator like Harper…he must go.
Thank goodness the good people of Canada decided to take the money and vote Liberal. Now we can become Greece and likely the S**** wont hit the fan before I get mine and can laugh at all the children who will have to suffer from austerity being imposed by the people who are giving us the money to live beyond our means.