I am sick to bloody death of Canadian Politics. As if it's not bad enough we have to suffer through an election over the "holidays", but we don't even have anyone worth voting for. It the same old song and dance over and over... the Librals are plagued with scandal "Time for a change!".... But the alternative isled by an ultra- conservative extremist who will end up pushing human rights in this country back 20 years and spend us back into the huge deficit the Librals have only just managed to drag us out of after the last conservative government. So who the Hell do you vote for? You take one smelly old turd and replace it with a smelly new turd and you're still left with a smelly turd.
Paul Martin... I would like to give the guy the benifit of the doubt, but everytime I turn on the news something else pops up. I would like to think that the sponsorship thing was Cretien's scandal and Paul Martin (even though he was Finance minster) really was in the dark. I know how budgets and committees work, I can easily tell myself that he was in charge of making the budget, but all that entailed was allocating funds to departments to be administered by the heads of those departments... and that would work for me.. knowing that he and Cretian weren't exactly best of friends and that he was out of the loop should also help... but sadly a person can only delude themselves so far and I just can't bring myself to completely believe it.
Stephen Harper.... This guy should change his name to Stephen Hitler. He claims to stand up for the charter of rights when he is waving around his Health care proposals... saying the Canadian Supreme Court has judged that long wait times for care are against a person's charter rights. Yet at the same time he wants to revisit and resind gay marriage... even though the Highest Courts in every Province and Territory save two have said it is against the Charter of rights to deny same sex couples the right to marry.... even though every Province and territory save two had already allowed legal same sex marriages before the government voted to change the definition of marriage. He says he won't invoke the not withstanding clause and will put it to an open vote in the House of Commons.....even though the issue has already been put to an open vote in the House and passed (with a MINORITY government in power no less). Hell I don't even believe in marriage let alone gay marriage but I want my decision to not marry to be my choice, not a matter of not being allowed to by law. It's not the only issue his party has threatened to revisit. During the last election there was talk of revisiting the abortion issue and appointing a 3rd party to assess and decide who qualified for abortion.. taking the choice away from the women in question (don't think he's let that little idea drop just because we haven't heard anything of this time around). And he'd drop the Gst by two percent... well no actually he'd drop it by 2% over the next 11 years and we'd actually only see it go down by 1% in the beginning.... it was the conservative Government of Brian Mulrony that gave us the f'n GST to start with. $100 a month for day care for each child in your family... works out to $25 a week enough to hire a babysitter for about half a day (and then you are left to find the person you trust alone with your children on your own).
Basic fact the Federal Government has no business setting up Daycare and no jurisdition to do it no matter what they promise... it's a provincial matter.
Jack Layton.... this guy reminds me of a sleezy used car salesman. Like Larry from Three's Company. Not to mention the NDP has no chance of making up the next government, so a vote for the NDP is really saying you'll let other people choose who runs the country... since this guy is never going to be Prime Minister. In fact if your riding elects an NDP candidate you'll find your "Voice in the House" sitting somewhere way in the back row and you'll have a better chance of seeing Him/Her in the supermarket out shopping than you ever will of seeing him/her in footage or debate in the House of Commons.
I'm not even going to mention Gilles Ducepppe.. since no one outside of Quebec can vote for his party. It makes no sence that he is even included in the Leadership debates... He couldn't be Prime Minister if he wanted to.
So those are the "Choices" and there is no "None of the Above" selection on the ballot (I'm sure that would really change the outcome if there were). It's the devil your know or the evil little nazi you don't want to, and more and more it looks like that evil little bugger is gaining ground. The Librals got caught with thier hands in the cookie jar and there's no dancing around it, but why do we have to punish ourselves in order to punish them.... that's what's so unfair about the election. We were actually better off with the minority government we already had. They actually had to shop their policies around the house and make amendments that suited the needs of the majority of the MP's in order to pass them. Isn't that how democracy is suposed to work in the first place?????????????
The more I think of it the the more I'm convinced that the parties aren't really the problem. We've seen that no matter which one is in power they end their time in scandal. We got our first female Prime Minister by default because she was Deputy Prime minister when Brian Mulroney "was forced to" resign in scandal. That scandal was so intense it split the Conservative Party in half and we saw the Birth of the Reform party that devolved into the Ultraconservative Extremists Part...er.. Alliance Party. We then saw Peter McKay run for the leader of the Conservative party and sell out the half of them that wanted a merger... saying if they gave him the job he wouldn't merge with the Alliance party, only to turn right around and place his giant nose right up Stephen Harper's backpassage and sell out the other half who didn't want one by merging (liar liar pants on fire)....... This is the guy who would be deputy Prime Minister if the conservatives get in. So when Stephen Harper is throw out...er... resigns (Probably in Scandal) Peter McKay gets to be Prime Minister for a month or two. And what's the deal with the hieresses? Why so desperate to marry a millionaire Petey? So the fact remains that they all end up in scandal in the end no matter which party you vote for. So it's not the Parties that are the Problem.... it's the Party system of government that's the problem.
Give it some thought... it makes perfect sense... you have one side that makes up the government and the other side that makes up the oposition. The oposition's job is exactly what it sounds like... oppose the government. No wonder they never accomplish anything. When you go to the polls and vote for the person to represent your riding.. it doesn't really matter whose running, because you aren't voting for a person.. you are voting for a party, and the person who is elected doesn't actually represent you and your area in the House... they represent their party. then one party holds the power and pushes through whatever policy they like based on pure numbers. That is not a democracy.
What we need to do in Canada is flush the Party System and start over. No more groups or teams going to Ottawa, but individuals who represent the people in the area that elected them first and formost. Just like a Student's council or Municipal Government. There would be no "Government" or "Oposition".. there would just be Members of Parliament committed to looking out for the best interests of the people in their riding and the best interests of Canadian's in general. Of course this system is not without it's flaws either but there are plenty of measures that could be put into place to insure it against corruption. There could be a system in place so that people in a riding could recall their candidate and elect someone else if the person they elected wasn't doing their job properly or hadn't taken the proper steps to fullfill their Promises. No one even bothers listening to the Government Election Promises any more because the majority of them are just happy fantasies that will never never never happen. Something as simple as making sure the seating in the House was shuffled at random for every sitting so no one consistently sat together and formed little coalitions could be put in place. How about putting people in charge of ministry porfolios who actually have a background in the area they are put in charge of? Wouldn't it be nice to see the ministry of health actually run by people with a health care background? For that matter there shouldn't be just one MP running the Ministries either there shoulds be a committee of MPs, 3 or 4 from different areas so no one person controls the purse strings. What I see would be a system where someone was elected from a New Brunswick Riding.. went to Ottawa with a list of concerns etc for their riding and presented it... then an MP from somewhere else in the country (say Alberta) was sent out to investigate them and report back. Then policies would be laid out for debate, and just like a debate team the pro side and the con side would be assigned to half a dozen people per side at random. Six MPs would go off and put together their arguements for and six would go and put together their arguements against.. then a proper debate would be had in the House of Commons and everyone would vote. No Party lines... No coalition voting... just a free vote majority rules. I think if something like that were to come about in Canadian Politics you'd see the separatist movement in Quebec disappear. Why separate when you can actually have your needs addressed properly?
Unfortunately we don't live in a true democracy and are forced to have to Choose between Paul Martin, whose Canadian steamships are regisitered in another country so they don't pay Canadian taxes, or Stephen Harper, who writes open letters to the New York times Apologising on behalf of all Canadians to the US for not supporting them in their illegal war in Iraq among other things.
Make no mistake one of these two guys is going to be Prime Minister of Canada. And as much as I hate to do it I really have no choice but to vote Libral.
We really need to start a new party that is made of middle class people who actually know what it means to live in Canada. A party whose sole purpose is to eliminate the party system of Government and restructure the House into a useful and Democratic machine. We need to limit the wages of MPs so that they are making just slightly higher (for travel costs) than the average Canadian Salary...Then we'd see them work on bringing the National average up pretty damn quick. We need a party that really will put Canada first.. ie. Stop shipping out our raw resources and buying them back finished because labour is cheaper elsewhere.... stop depending on our Neighbour's to the south for trade when we are a resource rich country that should be fairly self sufficient. It makes no sense that one cow gets sick and a whole industry is brought to it's knees because there aren't enough packing plants in Canada to handle the load. That is a meat and potatoes industry and the meat and potatoes of Canadian industries should be contained within Canada... trade with other nations should be the gravy. Stop allowing huge Corporations that make record profits to lay off staff because their shareholders want a bigger piece of the pie. Stop allowing foreign held business to come into this country and put locally owned businesses out of business.... Watch the Age of Walmart Documentary it may open your eyes a little to the actual business practices of Walmart... and may make you decide that the extra dollar at Zellars is worth it to support a Canadian Corporation that pays it workers union wages. We need a new Party that has the interests of average Canadian's at it's core.
Sadly until that party is formed we are stuck with the same smelly turds.
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