January 20, 2006 at 12 PM

Get Oot and Vote, Eh?

I suppose that if I were a real, dedicated political blogger, I’d have been covering Monday’s upcoming Canadian federal election like this guy and this guy. Or at the very least like this guy.

But instead I took a very long holiday. And when I came back I immediately starting working like a kitten on a ball of yarn. No time for the huffery and bluffery of the campaign trail.

Three days now remain until voting day, and although I’ve personally already cast my ballot (mailed in from overseas), the result seems very much up in the air. To be sure, no one is betting on the incumbent Liberal Party at this point — they’ve done a remarkable job of botching this campaign. There is still time enough, however, for them to try and scare undecided Ontario voters into supporting them over anyone else because, if you believe Paul Martin, only the Liberals can represent “Canadian values”.

I was at a dinner party the other night and the hosts, an academic couple who had lived in Canada for fifteen years but originally hailed from Czechoslovakia, argued that the Liberals have done a lot of positive things for Canada in their time in power.

I find myself in a curious position. Next to nothing in the Conservative Party’s platform appeals to me. I disagree with their stance on almost all major issues. The Liberals, if they can actually claim to stand for any positions at all (a questionable claim), are a closer match with my views than the Tories. I am not a conservative in anything but my desire to conserve the habitable Earth for future generations. I also cannot deny that the Liberals have achieved some positive ends in their thirteen years in power, leaving a country which is more economically stable and strong today than it was in 1993.

Despite all that, I would still prefer the Conservatives to defeat the Liberals on Monday. I hope it’s only a Conservative minority, but I would be really upset if the Liberals managed to turn it around and nab another government. The rot of corruption took hold of the Liberals a long time ago, and it has set in for good. They govern by polls rather than by initiative. Perception is the only thing that counts to the Liberal cabinet. They have wasted the vast majority of their years in power with patronage, empty posturing and infighting.

More than anything, it’s the sheer arrogance of the idea that any one party can claim to stand for an entire country’s ideals against all other opponents. This idea is founded on a lie: that the Liberal Party stands for something. It is an umbrella organization, designed to cast a shadow over as broad a spectrum of beliefs as possible. Despite all of Paul Martin’s bluster against the Conservatives secret agenda, many of his own Liberal Members of Parliament voted against same sex marriage. Meanwhile, when campaigning against the New Democratic Party, Paul Martin stands beside the most powerful union leader in the country and remains silent when he says Quebeckers should vote for a separatist party rather than vote Conservative.

I’m more than willing to give the Conservatives a chance to govern, because their leadership has never had a crack. Remember, this isn’t your old guard, Brian Mulroney-era Tories. They haven’t had the chance to be corrupted by power yet, and although that will doubtless happen eventually, I’m eager and curious to see if it’s possible for Canadian democracy to be served by a party that stands up for its beliefs rather than being paralysed into inaction by polling.

Perhaps my words will come back to bite me. There is a risk that everything said about the Conservatives in certain corners of Canadian discourse — that they harbour a secret plan to capital-R “Republicanize” the country — is true. I personally don’t believe that the vast moderate collective that is the Canadian electorate will permit anyone with extreme views to hijack the national agenda.

Having said that, I’d like to point out what I believe is one of the great fallacies of the Canadian media: the existence of a consensus on the same-sex marriage issue — or any issue for that matter. Reading national columnists and listening to mainstream reporters would have you believe that enough Canadians support same sex marriage to make it a closed issue, especially in the cities where opinions, you know, actually count. That’s not intended as a slight to rural voters: I think they’d be the first to complain that their views don’t get airing from the Canadian media. (Such is life in one of the most urbanized countries on earth.)

Read this Toronto Star story and see if you still think that this consensus exists. Among so-called “immigrant communities” in Toronto — the bedrock of Liberal support — the reporter found that the issue that drove voters away from the Liberals the most strongly was the party’s position on same-sex marriage.

There may very well be a consensus among white, English-as-a-first-language voters in Canada. Canada is not, however, a country composed solely of white, English people. (Thankfully.) I say this as someone who does support same-sex marriage: I think this is one of the big undercurrent issues driving people who have historically voted Liberal to vote Conservative. The endless scandals and corresponding mistrust don’t help either, obviously, but I think people who preach about Canadian “tolerance” underestimate the inherent conservatism of people who have moved here more recently from countries with more, well, conservative cultures.

What’s my point exactly? That there is no such thing as a cohesive set of “Canadian values”, and anybody claiming to represent them is only pandering. Stick in a needle in the Liberal balloon and it will burst as their is nothing but hot air inside. A party that tries to stand for everything stands for nothing.

If you are still not sure who to vote for on Monday, I say to you this: vote for a party that you actually believe in. Vote for someone who stands for something.

Previously: Ho Ho Ho

Subsequently: RCI Breaking the Law

January 2006
the Archives
Home