Canadian Election: Silly Side of Things

Well, we are into the “promise the sun and stars” phase of the election campaigns. But I will get to that in another posting. I was reading about something this week that needs to be addressed first. We are in a campaign where not every recognized political party in Canada is treated equal. Somewhere a decision was made by the broadcasters that not everyone is equal in this election. Exactly when was a consortium, composed of five broadcast executives, ordained with the right to determine which Canadian political parties should participate in the leaders' debate? How dare they? Shouldn't the voters of Canada have the right to listen to every party who has a point to make? Especially a party, like the Green Party, that has a candidate in every riding in Canada. Who made them the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-wise group to decide who and what should be included?

Some may say that since they are not an official party they shouldn't be included. To be an official party you must have 12 seats in parliament. This can't be the reason. Equally, since 1993, the NDP, Bloc Québecois, the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party have all been invited to participate in the debate without holding official party status. In fact, in 1993 the Reform Party held only one seat and the Bloc was not officially recognized in the House of Commons, its members and only elected MP sat as independents. The Bloc, with only 75 candidates, participates in both the English and French debates, despite the fact that voters in 233 predominantly English-speaking ridings cannot even vote for their candidates.

And then some may argue that the debates are not that important anyway. Green Party of Canada leader Jim Harris has other thoughts. Here are some of his quotes on this matter. "Do Canadians really believe that five executives meeting on a conference call should arbitrarily decide the political choices for over 22 million voters?" He then added "The importance of the leaders' debate cannot be overstated. There is widespread agreement that televised leaders’ debates are defining moments in Canadian elections. The latest Ipsos-Reid poll shows support for the federal Green Party at 5 per cent federally and 14 per cent in B.C. Based on these polls, over 640,000 Canadians are ready to vote for the Green Party. To these and other Canadians, the consortium is saying, your issues and concerns will not be debated.“

The question of time constraints and the number of participants has also been mentioned as the reason for not including the party. Well unfortunately this can't be the reason that the broadcasters don't want to include the Green Party. You see, since 1993 there has been 5 parties included in the leaders' debates. This year there are only 4 parties invited. Inviting the Green Party to the debate would only fill an existing seat. So what gives? Maybe it is time for the CRTC to get involved. It is their duty as the federal regulator of everything radio and television in this country to say that the broadcasters don't have the right to chose who we can and can't listen to...especially when it comes to something as important as the running of our country for the next 4 to 5 years.

I think that the consortium's decision to exclude the Green Party and other registered parties discourages voter participation. It’s clear that voters want to see more and hear more of the other alternatives to the big 4 parties. In the last election, over 8.2 million voters disapproved of the political choices available to them and instead chose "none-of-the-above" by not voting. Polls indicate that the alternative parties draw the most support from voters between the ages of 18 and 35. This is also the demographic least likely to vote based on the 2000 returns. These are also the same Canadians who feel particularly disenchanted with the old-line parties and are willing to listen to what the alternatives have to say. So I say give all parties a chance to speak their points in front of a national audience at the same time as every other party gets to make their points. If they are given a chance to speak and what they say doesn't make sense then the Canadian voters can show them at election time. This should go for all parties. Are you listening voters of Ontario and Quebec?

Canada's Party???

So the Canadian election has been called and I figured I would go read the various party sites and see what bull they are offering us, the poor voting public, to try and buy...I mean bribe...I mean convince us into voting for their candidate. So I started off by visiting the Conservative Party of Canada web site. I discovered that the party doesn't consider the NWT part of Canada. At least we are not listed in their database. Put in the postal code for Inuvik and you get “The postal code you entered was not found in our database. Please check it and try again.” Now how can a party (and one that I support) forget to make sure that the entire postal code listing for Canada is in the database. Come on guys...get with it or my vote might have to go somewhere else (not Liberal).

I decided that if the Conservatives had this problem then maybe some of the others might also forget we are here. I checked the Liberals web site. Nope, they think we are part of Canada. But then again they should. The one vote from the NWT always goes to the Liberal candidate Ethel Blondin-Andrew. So next I checked the NDP web site. Damn, they too know who we are. Next on the list was the Green Party of Canada. They too know who we are. Well surely the Canadian Action Party doesn't know who we are. Wrong, they do too. There is no candidate for the riding but they want to know if I want to be their candidate. hmmm...Let me think on that. Anyway, do all the other parties know who we are? Let's continue to push on. Next it was on to the Canadian Heritage Party website. They don't have a postal code search that I could find but at least they have the Western Arctic riding listed even though they don't have a candidate. They don't however want to know if I want to be their candidate. That's okay, I really don't know their platform (if they have one). On to the next one on the list. Aha!!! Surely those red/pinko commies don't know we are here. Sure enough. The Communist Party of Canada doesn't have a search and only have listed ridings where they have a candidate. That's good to know. No chance of a comrade MP from the NWT. Next I checked out the stoners party known as the Marijuana Party. Yes you read that right. Joint central of Canada. Damn...no chance of a stoner MP as it appears they only run candidates in Ontario and Quebec. Hahaha, that figures. I knew the stink coming out of Ottawa at times couldn't be from the Liberals (or could it). Next it was on to another pinko commie party. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada. No way could they know who we were. Well after looking at this horrible site for 5 minutes I couldn't find any place to search for candidates...I couldn't even find a list of ridings or candidates. I assume they won't have an NWT candidate, at least I hope not. Continuing my journey it was on to the Progressive Canadian Party. This is the bunch of sore losers who didn't want to join the Conservative Party of Canada when the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance Parties joined last year. They too don't have a search or list of candidates. Last and least there was the Bloc Quebecois. oops, maybe I should say Bloc Québécois. I guess I better spell it correctly as not to offend anyone. I checked the site even though we knew that they only had candidates from Québéc and really don't care about the rest of Canada. Checking proved us correct.

Well it appears that most of the larger parties knew who we were or where we were at least. Hopefully the nasty e-mail I sent to the Conservative party will wake them up and have them include us in their database. If they don't do it soon I may have to look for an alternative choice. Green Party anyone? Keep checking for more insight into the Canadian election and afterwards as we look forward to the US election.

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