So, the 2006 elections have gone well so far. Bolivia and Chile have both gone to the leftists. But Canada will be moving rightward.
It’s interesting to see how the editorializing on behalf of the Tories goes. It’s basically – the liberals are bad, and the tories really aren’t as bad as you think. Quite a sales pitch.
Even though my first inclination was to abstain this election because I wanted turnout to be low (points to anyone who guesses where I would have gotten a notion like that), I’ve found a reason to vote. Someone reminded me that the party you vote for gets $1.75 in federal funding. And in Canada apparently it’s harder for parties to raise funds from corporations, which is a good thing.
But what I wanted to do in this blog entry was to point out a few other things that are going on. Of course, these are not the sorts of things that should be debated by candidates or the public at election time, so it makes sense that they aren’t part of the electoral conversation (that’s sarcasm).
Like the bombing in Kandahar. The injured soldiers, the diplomat, dead. Canadian officials talking about preparing for more like that. Do the injuries and deaths have any relationship to Canada’s foreign policy? To the way Canada’s linked up with the US military in Kandahar?
Like bin Laden. The US Terror War, which has alienated the world, increased every kind of terror including the kind the US is at war with, and which everyone seems to agree Canada should get more into, not less (while everyone else in the world is trying to move away).
Like Haiti, where the elite is trying to set the UN up to do a massacre so that elections can be cancelled. Why would they do that? Because they can’t pick the winner. Which, incidentally, is why they got rid of the last guy. So, if these pre-planned massacres do happen and the elections are cancelled or just delayed again, what side of democracy will Canada be on? What are the different sides of this debate? Who is prepared to talk about what is really going on in Haiti?
More consensus: Americanization of the justice system (mandatory minimum sentencing). “Free Trade” (something that’s at the heart of the left shift in the Americas, but well outside discussion in Canadian politics).
No wonder Canada’s going against the trend. There’s a single issue in this campaign, “corruption”, and it is by nature moralistic, not ethical, let alone political. So much consensus, so little at stake. But so much at stake, too. We’re missing a lot.
