It’s time to start campaigning for the next election January 24, 2006
I know it’s slightly hypocritical of me to complain about the results of the election when I never spoke about it in the first place. Hell, I have a BA in Politics, so it’s not like I didn’t know what was going on or have some insight into the whole damn fiasco. The least I could have done was to tell everyone to go vote.
To say I’m disappointed with the results is an understatement. I’ve lived in Ontario for all but two years of my life, and I vividly remember what having the Conservatives in power meant (granted, they’re a slightly different party than the Conservatives at the federal level, but they shared a lot of the same policies). And I’m old enough to remember what it was like under the federal Progressive Conservatives, with Mulroney at the helm. (Would someone please tell him to shut the ever-loving hell up already?)
A great deal was made about how the Liberal party is corrupt, but really? It wasn’t the whole party - it was only a group of people, most of whom aren’t around anymore. And it’s not like any party who has had the chance to be in power is squeaky clean. Also - I never really saw the Gomery inquiry report as that big a deal - the government wastes ten times that on a daily basis, so what’s the big deal?
My greatest concern is what this is going to mean for us as a country. Under the Liberals, we’ve done pretty good for ourselves as a nation. It’s not to say I don’t want to fling things at Paul Martin occasionally, but I’m much less worried about who we align ourselves with on the international stage. The last time we had a Conservative Prime Minister, we had the mass sale of public holdings, NAFTA, and Free Trade. This time - who knows? Participation in the quagmire that is Iraq? A deepening of NAFTA? And this is just my concerns about what’s going to happen to us on an international level, never mind the monumental foul-up which will go on at the national level. (When you get the outcome the Republican Party is hoping for - start worrying!)
The only consolation out of this is that the Conservatives only have a minority, which means they have to play nice with the other parties. And that - joy of joys (I say sarcastically) - this won’t last five years because minority governments never last long.
I’m glad to see Paul Martin go. Even if he’d won a minority government, leaving is still the best thing he could do. He’s primarily a businessman, one that doesn’t have the greatest sense of what real life is like outside of business relationships; most of his buddies in his caucus are the same. With him out of the picture, some of the more social-minded Liberals (most of whom Martin gave the boot to) might have a chance of getting back in the game and making a difference. The Liberals could use that kind of make-over.
However, electing Stephen Harper’s Conversatives is hell of a price to pay. If the Conversatives had won a majority, Canada would be doomed. Doomed, I tells ya. At least the NDP got some seats out of it, which, if they’re lucky, will translate into more seats for them in the next election (the NDP do an excellent job at preventing the extremists on both sides from doing too much damage).
If we’re lucky, Harper won’t wreck the country before the next election, and then we could only hope he doesn’t win a majority. Otherwise, goodbye to the arts, goodbye CBC, goodbye affordable secondary education, goodbye public health care, and hello Iraq.
My only consolation in this whole thing is, like you’ve mentioned, it is a minority. And no one will deal with the so-called Conservatives (I can’t bring myself to even call them Conservatives, when they are clearly the Alliance/Reform party)… I mean, on what issues will the NDP or Liberals agree with the “Tories”? And the Bloc only agrees on issues of strengthening provinces/weakening the federal government (which, while I’m not a huge of it, is better than them agreeing with the “Tories” on any social/heatlh/education issues)… so I agree that it’s going to mean another election relatively soon and hopefully SH won’t find some way to do too much damage in the meantime.