We all know our democratic system has issues and sure, it could be a lot worst, but the fact is it is no longer working for Canadians. There has been promises about reform at both the Federal and Provincial levels but nothing permit has occurred to date. In fact the Ontario government had passed legislation to allow municipalities to use ranked ballots which was reversed by Doug Ford’s government as soon as he came into office.
So what does this say about our system when a party can claim they want voting reform and then come up with some excuse once elected by this same system that they claimed was broken?
I know most people will vote based on the Party leader instead of their local candidate and party platform. We need to understand that the Party leaders that we see in ads and claiming that X will happen if you vote for their party is just like the CEO of a company. It’s your local MPP that is actually getting things done and who you will communicate with when you need to interact with the government.
I think it’s safe to safe that all 4 of the Party leaders have strong personalities and are leaning more right or left then the typical voter. If we vote solely on the party leader we will get a government filled with yes men and women who will be more afraid of losing their job then standing up for what is right when their “boss” goes too far.
In Statistics there is something called standard deviation, which means with a large sample size of random people 85% of people will be within this range. In the case of politics the view of most people will be in the center holding either slightly Right (finances first) or Left (people first), but they will understand the need to find a balance with the other side. Once you move into the second and third groups of people on each side, the passion for their believes greatly increases. These are the people can wake up the rest of us to a new reality or destroy our way of life if given too much power. While both groups are important for our society they can’t just be allowed full reign of our political system. We need a balance but most of us in the middle have been too comfortable to pay attention to those outside our little circle and as a result we have much of our current chaos.
We are fortunate that it is every Canadian citizen’s right to have a say in who will run our various levels of governments, however fewer people then ever are choosing to participate in the system allowing someone else to speak for them and their family. Other then basic infrastructure we pay our fair share of taxes as a form of insurance hoping that when we need assistance programs will be funded properly to assist us and/or our family in our time of need. Let’s face it few of us will ever be called wealthy, so at some point we will have to rely on government services like healthcare, education and employment.
We should think of taxes as a type of rainy day fund, that gets pooled with others to ensure core services can be provided at a lower cost then if everyone had to purchase what they need when they need it. This was the original idea of most of our social services however, because governments over the last few decades saw them as cost centers rather then an investment in social wellbeing, their funding has been slashed by multiple governments. It’s only now that the Public, AKA policy holders, need to access these services in large numbers that we are realizing how badly our elected officials have mismanaged our rainy day fund.
While there is no one person to blame and no one person is going to be able to fix this, it is important that citizens start taking back our government by educating themselves and engaging in the process at the basic level of doing some homework before deciding who is going to represent their interests within government.
Below is a really good explanation of the political system within Canada at this time.
