Like most people you’re probably sick of the federal election by now, that is if you paid much attention to it in the first place.
As you may already know, the Liberals won a minority government this time around, losing more than 30 seats in the House. Which basically means that Paul Martin will always be one failed vote in the house away from a vote of non-confidence that would effectively shut down government, resulting in yet another federal election.
Admit it, this is a pretty stupid system of checks and balances that we have – "Move to approve this bill to provide our soldiers in Afghanistan some SPF 40 lip balm? No? Okay, we’ll see you at the polls in six weeks."
Some optimists believe that this minority government could be the start of a move towards proportional representation in Canada, free votes in Parliament, a greater role for an elected Senate, and, in short, a more democratic government. After all, parties will need to work together if they don’t want to bring all of government down.
I have my doubts because that means MPs will have to put our national interests before their personal and party interests, and during the campaign the major players made it abundantly clear that nobody was willing to compromise on anything. If you thought the campaign was negative, just wait until budget time rolls around.
On a positive note, voter turnout was up across the country, which means that most of you do care a little about the future. In the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast riding the turnout was up 4 per cent.
Still, I wonder how much of that voter turnout was driven by anger – anger at Liberal scandals, anger at the Conservative platform, anger at the budget-cutting anglophones – rather than an honest interest in our national politics. The Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois and NDP all made gains off the flagging Liberals, while the Green Party at last earned official status with more than two per cent of the vote, which could be the most positive thing to come out of this whole election. At least people are thinking in the long-term.
It was, after all, a campaign of small, inoffensive ideas, written in crayon to pander to the largest possible audience. The Big Ideas, which tend to be controversial and upset the people who don’t want to rock the boat, never once made it into the debate.
Our country needed a complete overhaul, but we only got the tires rotated.
Maybe that’s just my cynical interpretation of this election, but there’s a good reason for it.
The thing is I love my country. I’ve lived in four provinces now, and have visited all of them except for Newfoundland and the territories – and they’re on my list of things to do.
My favourite artists are members of the Group of 7. Some of my favourite bands come from places like Kingston, Toronto, Winnipeg, Halifax and Vancouver. I love the scenery, the diversity, the high culture, the low culture, our national sports, our national news and our national sense of humour.
I grew up frequenting Canada’s free hospitals and getting educated in the public school and subsidized post-secondary school system, and now I’m happy to say that my taxes support both.
But the country I grew up in is changing, and in a lot of ways it’s for the worse. That’s why I was hoping for more from this election.
I worry that Canada is slowly being taken over by globalization and the myth of the free market. I worry that we’ve lost our initiative, that we’re abandoning our traditions and values in the crass pursuit of wealth rather than a sustainable happiness. I worry that our utilities, mainly water and power, are under increasing pressure to privatize. I worry that our natural resources, like timber, gas and ore, are falling into foreign hands as our once great companies and institutions are bought and sold. Eaton’s is gone. Hudson’s Bay Company is fading. Our banks want to merge and diversify globally.
Our land is being farmed by farmers under contract to corporations who supply the seed, feed and livestock. Our seas are overfished to make multinational companies wealthy, not to feed local people and industries.
There’s no Canadian car company. Sweden, a country with a quarter of our population, recently had two, Saab and Volvo (now owned by General Motors and Ford respectively, but operated independently). Nortel would be a rough equivalent of Sweden’s Ericsson in the telecommunications department, with an important difference – Ericsson makes money. How much IKEA furniture do you have in your home?
I look to a country like Sweden, which shares our social values, and I wonder why Canada can’t have the same balance between people and profits? Why don’t we have six weeks of vacation time each year and a free post-secondary education to go with our free Medicare?
Canada is too small to be an equal partner of the U.S. and our values are different, so why do we continue to use the States as a model to follow and a yardstick of success?
It’s all about values, and ours are tied too tightly to the idea that the market is the embodiment of democracy, rather than a government by and for the people. After all, it wasn’t the market but government that created the middle class, Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, Employment Insurance, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I was hoping for an election that was about something, a real move forward instead of more tinkering with systems that are failing. It’s time to talk openly and honestly about social, economic and environmental sustainability, the state of the ecology, urban growth and decay, foreign policy, global warming, water availability, 30-hour work weeks, progressive taxation, military necessities and deployment, policing challenges, education funding, health care’s failings, welfare’s realities, and so on and so forth. But as always the major party platforms were long on language and short on details.
A minority government may be good and it might not function at all. Until government is ready to address the real issues, it doesn’t really matter.
Wake me in another four years.
