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You call that a mandate?

Little Stevie was, gasp, enthusiastic, animated, cheerful, emotional… smiling. Yes, smiling! I didn’t even know the guy had teeth.
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Little Stevie was, gasp, enthusiastic, animated, cheerful, emotional… smiling. Yes, smiling! I didn’t even know the guy had teeth. When he was chosen to lead the last minority government he looked about as happy and comfortable as a man who just moved into a new house only to find out that his neighbours on both sides were Amway reps and the guy across the street sold insurance. This time around he looked, well, human.

There were only two moments during his victory address when he seemed distressed. The first came when he patted Canadians on the back, thanked them for their vote of confidence and told them their electoral decision ensured the very survival of “the true North, strong and free.” The uncomfortable buzzing in Stevie’s trouser pocket — indeed in the pockets of every member of the Harper electoral team — was an immediate call from VANOC warning him not to even think of moving into “With glowing hearts,” unless he wanted to face a copyright suit.

The second moment of discomfort was when he said, “The results tonight are a strong mandate for the policies of the Conservative government.” Stevie’s not a dumb man. He is, in fact, quite smart, a student of history and, of course, an economist, the combination of which goes a long way to explain the deep pool of warmth he usually exudes. Being a smart man, he knew as the words tumbled out of his mouth that only in Canada’s antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system can a politician create a “mandate” out of a minority win of one-third of all the votes cast by the lowest voter turnout in a country’s history. That pretty much puts mandate in a dead heat with sustainable in the race for words that have been stripped of all meaning.

And it begs the question: Whither the other 40+ per cent of eligible voters? Who are these people, this vast pool of Canadians, who are so apathetic, so self-absorbed, so indifferent to who runs the country that they couldn’t bother to cast a vote?

For the most part, they are not immigrants. Immigrants have jumped through enough hoops to become Canadian citizens that huge percentages of them vote. Perhaps they still believe in the dream so many born-and-bred Canadians — Canadians by chance of birth, if you will — have either given up on or never bought in to.

They’re not those poor souls with a heightened sense of civic duty, people who would be disappointed in themselves if they didn’t exercise their franchise. Those people are used to holding their noses, swallowing hard and casting a vote for someone they’d rather not sit next to on a bus or share a drink with, let alone have governing them. They vote, hoping that in doing so there might be a better selection of candidates next time or, at the very least, believing somehow that the act of voting lends legitimacy to their bitching about what a cesspool politics has become.

No, the 40 per cent of voters who are voters in name only are last night’s biggest losers. On second thought, they’re actually a rung below losers. Losers, by definition, are players; non-voters have chosen not to play the game. They’ve walked away from any involvement, any responsibility, any ownership.

Sadly, I am not without empathy for their point of view even though I fall squarely into that civic duty crowd. This was an election only Stephen Harper wanted, one in which he had to weasel his way out of a codified promise he made as Prime Minister to abandon the cheap parliamentary trick of calling elections whenever the prize looked ripe for the taking.

It was an election without personality and without personalities. The Conservative party has been a one-man show under Harper. His caucus, his ministers, are puppets on strings, two-dimensional soulless vessels mouthing pre-recorded words. “I’m Stephen Harper and I’ve approved everything these empty suits say.”

The opposition was opposition in name only. Stephie Dion entered the hall last night to the whispered shouts of “Dead man walking. We’ve got a dead man walkin’ here.” Diamond Jack spent the campaign offering up alluring images of a Canada long past, the Canada of 1961 when solidly middle-class blue collar workers manufactured things, mined resource wealth and brought down huge trees using brute strength instead of flicking levers in big yellow machines. The Bloc offered spoilers in Quebec the chance to continue to be spoilers, a role they’ve grown comfortable with since it allows them to be winners or losers depending which role seems most to their advantage.

I empathize with the greenies who cast two-thirds as many votes as Bloc supporters but who garnered zero seats for their efforts instead of 50. It takes a particular effort to cast a protest vote and that’s what Green party supporters did. In an election where the only role the environment played was as a stick with which Mr. Harper bludgeoned the dead horse Dion for having the audacity to raise, it’s hard to understand what keeps them going. With a 19 th century Prime Minister shotgun-married to the petrobiz of Alberta, the future looks much the same as the past… just warmer. And more polluted.

And I empathize with everyone who feels so completely disenfranchised with Canada’s disproportional representation system that they’ve just given up on ever feeling that their vote counts. If I wasn’t so used to voting for losing candidates, I’d be tempted to join them. Mandate? My ass.

The silver lining in this election was local, not national. No John, I don’t mean you although congratulations to Mr. Weston are in order. His victory, with a much larger percentage of the vote than Mr. Harper, rewarded his diligence and perseverance in maintaining a high profile since his loss last time around to Blair… whatshisname.

The takeaway message in this election is to put your hopes, such as they are, on local politics. Local politics are the last frontier of real representation. Local politics may well be the only place left where your vote really counts. Checking out the list of people who have filed for mayor, councillor and school trustee — it’s posted at www.whistler.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=530#mayor — the next month is going to be an interesting one. We’ve got a couple of strong candidates for the top job, a large field of new names and familiar names for council and even a choice for school trustee.

Maybe locally we can put some meaning back in the word mandate.