Thoughts on Canada's federal election

Perhaps due to my relative apathy on the matter, I have yet to comment on last week's Canadian federal election . Perhaps I'll be away from Canada for too long to care, or perhaps I feel that my vote doesn't matter, or maybe I find all of the alternatives rather unappealing. In any case, I do care about Canadian politics, but it's not something I lose sleep over.

I pity Paul Martin. The guy never had a chance. Sure, the Liberals were the front-runners, and sure, they had a chance to win, but what I mean is that nobody really gave PAUL MARTIN a chance. Martin inherited a party that had many Chretien loyalists (though many quit or were shuttled off to patronage positions), plus a couple of major scandals, namely "sponsorship scandal" and allegations of insider trading. It was unfortunate that Martin and his two year old cabinet took the fall for the decade-long reign of the Chretien clique. Who can forget the imperious attitude of Shiela Copps, the aloof Hedy Fry, and of course, the corrupt Alfonso Gagliano. Anyway, most Canadians are too stupid to tell the difference. Still, I pity Kim Campbell more for the 1993 Tory meltdown.

Let's look at what many consider the turning point of the election: on Boxing Day, a gunfight between drug dealers in downtown Toronto claimed the life of a 15 year old bystander. The Tories capitalized on this, saying that the Liberal Party was soft on crime, etc. First of all, the legislative branch is largely independent of the judiciary, and vice-versa. One can hardly blame the Liberal government, particularly Paul Martin's Liberals, for a decline in the effectiveness of the RCMP, the OPP, or Toronto Police, and that's IF you believe there has been a decline at all. Also, the Liberals can do very little about the cultural aspect of crime, in this case, the influence of American street gang culture. In fact, if prevention is done at the school level, education is under provincial and municipal jurisdiction, not federal. Furthermore, the government cannot be held fully accountable for the socio-economic condition of those who commit crimes, and we can hardly say that Canada has been worse off under the Liberals like we can say that the US is worse off under George W. Bush.

I must admit that I'm a BIT worried that Canada has a Conservative government. First of all, the old Tories used to be the PROGRESSIVE Conservatives. As we all know, that party all but died out in the 1993 federal election. The current incarnation of the Tories is the marriage of the Reform Party (later the Canadian Alliance), an Alberta-based party of rednecks in suits, and the remnants of the old PCs. Stephen Harper's Conservatives are not particularly fiscally conservative, so no need to fear for mass privatization and cutbacks. What scares me, though is the party's avowed social conservatism. While I consider myself something in between a traditional guy and a hippie, I think that this party has its fair share of fundamentalists in its ranks, and if the party gains a majority in subsequent elections, our hard-earned civil liberties may be threatened by the likes of them.

NOTE: For you non-Canadians out there, Tory = Conservative.