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June 15 2004
By Fred Kirby

The federal election approaches so we must get beyond the message.   Mr. Martin goes to Toronto and with his Toronto-area liberal members announces great things for the waterfront. Mr. Martin’s government will give $125 million to “kick-start Toronto’s stalled waterfront rejuvenation.” Unless Toronto voters think carefully, they will be enthused about this generous recognition of their waterfront needs. In 1972, during the federal election, Mitchell Sharpe, a cabinet minister in the Trudeau government, stood where a number of condos now block the view to Lake Ontario and announced the federal government would fund a waterfront park for the people. It never happened. It was never meant to happen. Pork barrelling is the lowest form of campaigning; that it is effective is a sad commentary on voters and not far removed from the days when politicians literally bought individual voters with cash, liquor, and jobs on the highways. When we buy the message, we deserve the results.

 Gas prices are on the rise. All parties express outrage and promise they will act on behalf of the people. Parties are trying to make mileage of a phenomenon over which they have little control. Canadians believe they have an inalienable right to cheap access to a non-renewable resource. Rather than pander to voters, politicians should tell us higher prices are the reality and we need to develop strategies to better protect this non-renewable resource, oil, that is the cornerstone of our industrial society. Voters serve themselves better if they discount anything said during the election about controlling gas prices.  Gas price chatter is a mug’s game.

 It is important for voters to ask what kind of Canada we want. Without that we are vulnerable to the political salesman at our door or on our TV. For instance, there is nothing dastardly with wanting to have a closer military and economic relationship with the United States. There have been Canadians wanting this since Confederation. It is not new. Today, those people have a party to represent them. Mr. Harper will take them there. Because, however, of what is now occurring in the United States and their activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Canadian war party, for that is what they are according to their spoken word, wishes to downplay their belligerence for this election. That is unfortunate. Though I disagree with the conservative’s desire for a closer and more dependent relationship with the United States (a mouse cannot have an interdependent relationship with an elephant) I could at least respect them if they categorically set out their policy in this regard rather than fudge it. Otherwise some voters may become confused, not realizing that Mr. Harper and the conservative party want us to march in close step with the United States.

 Openness would be welcome in an election but without it voters need to look beyond the announcements, the ballyhoo, and the deliberate misinformation.

Get out and vote but make it an informed vote. There is a better chance not to end disappointed.