Strategic Voting: Last update

Here's my exhausted take on strategic voting. Originally written for the CTV blog but declined by them.

I'm considering declining my ballot at the polling station. Here's why.

I cannot in good conscience vote for the Martin led Liberal Party. Having become hegemony in Canada over the past 139 years has not matured the party into an entity with a commensurate sense of responsibility. It has instead engendered an orientation toward the belief that it is the inherent right of the Liberal party to govern Canada, a sense of entitlement if you will. Paul Martin himself is living out a Shakespearean dilemma, if not tragedy. Having fought so bitterly to claim for himself the destiny fate, personified by Louis St. Laurent, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, denied his father he finds himself singularly lacking in the skills and vision the task requires and that his father possessed in abundance. While Paul Martin Jr. performed well as a Finance Minister, his methods notwithstanding, as a Prime Minister he can only be qualified as a monolithic and disappointing failure.

Nor can I bring myself to vote for the Harper led Conservative Party. I cannot rid myself of the sense that in very fundamental ways they, at least as presently constituted, have a less than robust belief in the legitimacy of Confederation and the division of federal and provincial powers enshrined in the modern Constitution and the protection of rights provided in the Charter. Perhaps that is because both were the work of earlier Liberal governments. Perhaps it is because they believe Canada should be a republic and not a parliamentary democracy and that those documents are a barrier to them. Perhaps it is even because we have not been allowed to hear the endorsements of Canada's traditions and institutions offered by the Party's candidates due to some denied muzzle having been placed on them. I don't know. I do know I cannot bring myself to endorse placing the future of the country in their hands yet, even for a short time, given the amount and kind of damage they could do to this marvellous post-Enlightenment national venture by dint of simple order of Cabinet.

Neither will I freely grant the Jack Layton led NDP the governmental legitimacy they themselves have worked so tirelessly to decline. Political parties must exist to offer an alternative to existing government else what's the point. Under Layton it has been made clear that government is not the aim of the NDP. In the apologetics of the day that stance is called by the name of "realism". Perhaps. Yet still I am left with the sense that by not vigourously campaigning for government the NDP are tacitly admitting that they are aware of their inability to do so were they to be given the opportunity.

We are in a sorry state.

Dana,

As you are quite aware, our system is redisritibutive. We take from the successful people or provinces or regions and give to the ones with a lower standard of living! I dissagree with this, not because I am selfish, but rather that the transfers of wealth are largely supporting consumption as apposed to deveopment. I prefer to support the creation of needed infrastructure and development in Newfoundland or Queerbec than to be buying people there beer and popcorn and cable television.

Teaching Newfie's to fish..."if that ain't ironic"...gasp! The needy need to work for their own futures with the same toil and effort that every other Canadian engages in. They need to take their own futures seriously otherwise why sould anyone else? Most people who hae been successful had to suffer through very hard times at some point. The average millionaire has gone bankrupt thrice! Success without failure...it's a pipedream! If you encourage people incorrectly then they will always take he lowest common denominator. This premise opposes progress. I am all for supporting people to behave in ways that we all benefit from, but when we encourage them to retard our efforts by mindlessly discouraging responsiblility and suggesting that society is responsible when it is just plain bad personal management, well then we all suffer.