It’s looking like I get to vote in two federal elections this year, one for each of my citizenships. In an attempt to be a good little citizen of a democracy, today I investigated the websites of the four declared candidates in my home riding. (Note to my American correspondents: a riding is the Canadian equivalent of a congressional district, more or less.)
Overall, it’s sort of an interesting field. The Liberal candidate‘s a former CFLer with a doctorate in biological/ecological sciences, but points against him for not bothering with a web page of his own. The NDP’s man has been a journalist and a pastor, has a good track record in corrections reform, but isn’t as funny as he thinks he is. The Greens have put up an engineer who’s becoming a teacher, owns and operates a small organic farm, and is building a straw bale house: very cool, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into, although again no individual web page.
And then there’s the Conservative candidate. Retired brigadier-general, undergrad degrees in math/physics and philosophy. On paper, a pretty good candidate. But there are aspects of his beliefs that seem a little incoherent to me.
To wit: he claims that self-reliance
is something he believes in: the government should be one’s last resort in resolving problems. However, you’ll note on his positions page that he seems to call for significant government intervention in any number of areas. He feels that an MP should be permitted to vote freely on as many issues as possible
, but should also support his (sic) party positions
. (Self-reliance should be made of sterner stuff.) He believes in normative meritocracy, although how that’s going to happen without government intervention (i.e. laws) isn’t clear.
I know I’m being much tougher with this guy than with the others, but that’s only because every indication is that he’s going to win; the vast majority of the current riding was, before the lines were redrawn, part of the easternmost Alliance riding in Canada. He says a lot of the right things, but with enough weasel-room and backtracking that it’s not entirely clear what his true positions are. If it were just him — if the choice was honestly one of a representative for the riding — then I might even consider voting for him.
Of course it’s not just him. He’s in Harper’s party, and the implication of the bit about how an MP should vote their party line under most circumstances indicates to me that it doesn’t really matter how good a candidate this guy is personally, because it’s not him personally that one would be sending to the Hill.