Ok so I’ve had time to settle down and think about things in a logical way. My German side tends to flip out at a moments notice and I react not unlike a child strapped to a car seat flayling for freedom. Anyway, my last post is in error. What is going on in Canada at the moment with the Coalition IS democratic, a vote of no-confidence is within the right of a majority parliament facing a minority government. Stephen Harper also may well deserve it too. However, I’m still against the whole thing especially now that parliament is in effect not operating AT ALL until January. Brilliant stall tactic, Harper (sarcasm). Why am I against it? Because we are facing the very real possibility of another Depression, and what are our elected leaders doing? No, they’re not working together as one might think they would. They’re fighting over who is better suited to run Canada. Sugar-coat it any way you want, that’s what it boils down to. This coaliton will have power for 18 months and then what? A federal election…AGAIN! And who pays for these elections? We, the tax-payers! This is brilliant, we’ll solve our economic problems by pissing money away on another election!
Look, I’m not a Conservative and I’m not a Liberal and I’m sure the hell not an NDP’er I like to think of myself as middle-road, I watch what goes on and can see valid points from both sides. When one side does something that I don’t agree with I lean more towards the other and vice-versa. I weigh the good and bad of both sides and then I vote accordingly. In this instance I don’t agree with either side, what they’re doing is hurting Canada as a whole. We should be coming together to figure out a way to fix this problem, not going off in seperate directions and taking whatever pieces we can. People are scared and facing a very uncertain future, and this political unrest is not helping matters if anything, it is creating further disillusionment and distrust in the Canadian government.
I joined the facebook group, which has a piss-poor name attached to it but it was either that or join the “candles for a coalition” which I morally could not do. There were a lot of un-informed people in the group and a lot of informed people that were outside of the group were posting in it tearing arguments to shreds. They missed the point. The point is that these are all people who are scared and maybe don’t have the intricacies of our parliamentry system down-pat but know that what is happening isn’t right. I attended the rally this weekend and although a lot of what was said was not always accurate the message was clear, Canadians don’t want more uncertainty right now. We’re afraid. Let’s boil it down to what the average Canadian knows about voting.
1. Every so often there’s a federal election when the news tells me there is.
2. I vote for the party with whom I identify with the most.
3. I watch as the votes are tallied and we retain our old PM or recieve a new PM.
4. Depending which way I voted I either like the new PM, grumble about him, or I am indifferent. Regardless he’s my PM.
Now, with all that being said you can see why average Canadians would be upset right now. It looks like an attack on the prime minister, the elected leader of our country. Which is true to a degree, but not un-democratic. The truth of the matter is non-confidence votes are a way for the majority to push the minority out of power. There’s that word again, ‘power’. Despite what the coalition says, I very much doubt what their trying to do has anything to do with the betterment of Canadians. Very little, aside from attack ads, has been said to the Canadian people to reassure them. One would hope for a “my fellow Canadians” speech from the Coalition to outline what their doing and to spearhead any fears the people might be having. But nothing like that. Not even the PM has had the decency to do so. The PM has done possibly the most irresponsible thing of all, recess parliament to January. Yes let’s have not working federal government for a month, that’s brilliant. A friend said to me the other day (out of jest of course) “it’s probably just an elaborate ruse to get a long Christmas vacation.” Funny, but untrue. In fact this entire situation would be hilarious if it weren’t so depressing.
Anyway so ends my explanation. I wish there was a third side to all of this, I don’t particularily like being on the side of saving Stephen Harper but I can’t for the life of me morally agree with the Coalition either. If only there was a Canadian Concerned Citizens Party. Huh, would you look at that “CCCP”.
-D
