It is the brainless party hacks, the corrupt, and the incompetent ninnies who would fear losing their seats. We would have to focus more on what matters: what should public policy be and are those in power doing their jobs properly? Frequent elections would pose no threat to those members of parliament who are honest and competent. The "crisis" atmosphere generated by the media would not be as convincing. What would change would be that elections would cease to be an idiotic circus of infantile name-calling and button-pushing. Polling stations would become more familiar and permanent, but the procedure would remain the same. The limit of five years for an unchallenged administration would simply be reduced to one year, and elections would become a routine event, with the normal ones held on a regular and convenient date. The ability to overturn a government by a vote of no confidence would remain the same. Our parliamentary system could easily accommodate the change. There's no reason why we shouldn't have federal elections every year. I, on the other hand, rashly propose that we spend a little more. Yet journalists insist that we must bitterly resent spending three dollars apiece for democracy. The cost of a single federal election is insignificant compared to any of the Conservative government's pork-barrel give-aways, not to mention the billions of dollars of budget surplus that they pissed away just before a recession. Three dollars a year! This does not strike me as being an outrageous price to pay to live in freedom, when one considers that some of us have risked, and sometimes sacrificed, their lives to secure it. I calculate that every Canadian is called upon to spend three dollars per annum to defray the cost of holding federal elections. In the last few months, I've noticed that almost every time that "nobody wants an election" is trotted out, it is accompanied by some allusion to the expense of holding elections. The media harp on the lamest of supporting arguments for this theory: the idea that elections are "expensive".
#GENTLE READER MEANING PROFESSIONAL#
Decisions are best left to those natural geniuses, professional politicians and the media. Why is every journalist convinced that we dread this? Is it because they believe that we, the people, are so stupid that we can't bear to be forced to think about public policies and make decisions? Poor, poor, stupid us.We should be protected from having to make decisions, because we're so dumb, it would hurt our poor little heads to have to mark a ballot. The holding of an election does not impinge on anyone's private life in any annoying way, places no unwanted obligation, nor does it require any greater effort than taking a paid hour off of work to mark a few x's on a piece of paper. It's profoundly irresponsible of the media to propagandize this view.Įxactly what is the reasoning behind this claim that nobody wants (with the unspoken implication that nobody should want) to hold an election? What exactly is the unpleasant thing that people are supposed to fear? The opportunity to hold their politicians accountable? Nobody is obliged to go to the polls, if they don't want to. But it is extremely frightening to me, if it comes to be believed by the Canadian people that elections are an agonizing, traumatic ordeal that should be avoided at all costs. Nothing else is to be expected from the kind of creatures who worm their way into our Parliament. In his heart of hearts, he envies and admires the gerontocratic gangsters of the Communist Party in China. Stephen Harper, in particular, would love to be declared Prime Minister For Life.
Now, of course, every politician in power would naturally prefer to not be accountable to the people. This bizarre notion is almost invariably accompanied by the assertion that elections are "expensive". It is now accepted as universal wisdom that an election is a terrible ordeal that the Canadian public should resent enduring. What concerns me is the chorus of agreement that echoed through the media. But the assertions of politicians don't concern me. In fact, the Liberals wasted their big opportunity, with typical cowardice, and Harper probably thinks he can win if the cards are flopped now. But the opposition Liberals also used it to avoid a confrontation they did not feel ready to win. Our creepy Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has been intoning this phrase since the possibility of overturning his government appeared on the horizon. Lately, the suspect phrase is "nobody wants an election". I always get suspicious when I hear a single phrase repeated excessively in the media. Wednesday, SeptemWhat You Get For Three Dollars
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