With a week to go in the federal election there’s a lot at stake. It is, the PM assured us, the most important since 1945. So I’m here to tell you what it is.
Uh, hang on a sec. It’s kind of tricky. First, because the platforms of the five parties allowed into the official debates are virtually indistinguishable and certainly unaffordable.
The latest Conservative micro-handout is “three days of paid bereavement leave in the event of a miscarriage,” on top of the “50 percent rebate for food and non-alcoholic drinks purchased for dine-in from Monday to Wednesday for one month, once it is safe to do so” and “a 15 percent tax credit for vacation expenses of up to $1,000 per person.” Which confirms not only that modern politicians are all looking to bribe voters, but that they’ve run out of original ideas as well as money because anything anyone could possibly hand out already was.
OK, you sigh. What about integrity? Can’t we at least elect the social democrat who’s not an affront to decency? Regrettably, the appalling hypocrisy of the PM on everything from electoral reform to balanced budgets, boil-water advisories, UNDRIP, open government, sunny ways, and feminism deserves punishment, but not at the cost of rewarding Erin O’Toole’s true blue-bright red flip-flop.
So what of the NDP, according to whose constant aggravating whine, Justin Trudeau is plotting on behalf of the “ultra-rich” and “super-rich” to keep Canada an undemocratic plutocracy? What a mean man.
No, not Trudeau, despite his ruthless streak a mile (1.6 kilometres) wide. Jagmeet Singh. The NDP is not tainted with the same hypocrisy as the other “mainstream” parties, including the Bloc, who hate Canada but love its subsidies. But the NDP are nasty even by unedifying contemporary standards, despite a nostalgic piece in the Sept. 13 National Post recalling Jack Layton’s appeal to his party to offer optimism and hope.
Don’t look to Singh for that nonsense. He is grimly determined to stomp the conspirators into the mud in the name of a bright future of peace and harmony. Ugh. And the Greens aren’t just watermelons, they have an antisemitic problem.
At this point a voice from the back may shout that I am not nearly cynical enough. And indeed, I try to avoid cynicism without veering into naivete. But what does it matter what the parties promise, wise or foolish, affordable or profligate, when they don’t do what they say? To treat Trudeau’s platform as an indication of his program is the conduct of a hardened chump, while O’Toole is a proven hypocrite just waiting to spring the old “oh, the fiscal situation is worse than we thought” stunt, or have it sprung on him by reality, and the NDP doesn’t even pretend their program is affordable.
It’s a stale political trick to promise the moon then go sorry, we’re out of green cheese, I didn’t know. And when you say dude, it’s your business to know, what have you been doing all these years if not studying government, they say bwa bwa bwa but mean I’ve been studying politics, which turns out it’s lousy preparation for governing but what can you silly voters do since (a) I’ve won now and (b) everyone else is the same.
Well, we could vote for a minor party. But then our candidate won’t win and it’s all about winning, right? Just like everything else in life, from business deals to domestic disagreements. Never mind deserving to win. That’s for loooosers.
Now another heckler shouts, “What about the PPC?” and is promptly hustled from the hall since the People’s Party apparently shouldn’t exist. They were excluded from the leaders’ debates, unlike the Bloc that thinks Canada shouldn’t exist and despite polling ahead of the Greens who were included because they are the conscience of the nation, the party we all secretly support even if we think we don’t. Or is that the NDP? I forget.
You might question Maxime Bernier’s management skills. If you could find them. But the insistence that all his supporters are vicious ignoramuses and his policies brutally absurd so they must not be discussed lest they prove appealing is, at last, one indication that there is something at stake in this election. Namely, shaking up a political class that is appallingly smug with nothing to be smug about.
They would like nothing better than to have us so demoralized we give up on fixing anything. So don’t. Find something to vote for or, if not, something you can at least vote against so indignantly that if you were hip you’d shout “Yeet.”
It’s some kind of meme, apparently. Or once was. I wouldn’t know. But I know if you vote Liberal, Conservative, or NDP, you’re wasting your ballot.
There’s too much at stake to do so.
