Today is election day, get out and cast your vote! I suppose I was one of the 20% undecided when I went to vote this morning, so it was kind of a decide on the spot sort of thing. I decided to ignore my local constituents (would have voted Conservative) and to ignore party platforms (would have voted Green) and instead based my vote on who I would want as the next Prime Minister of Canada.
Go Team Martin!
MasterMaq's Blog 
I am very disappointed in your vote. The Liberals, while they have had some successful finance plans in the last 10 years, their waste of money with adscam and the gun registry and others should not go unpunished. While I don’t particularily like Harper or Layton, the Liberal’s need to pay for their past misjudgements. Can you imagine how much better off Canada would be if they hadn’t wasted those billions. The Liberals are also not prepared to spend money in modernizing the military. This is a travesty and will result in our soldiers/airforce and navy personnel putting their lives on the line just to do their jobs. I would rather have the Conservatives spend money on the military and not reduce the taxes. There are many things to look at so read my full post tonight.
Well you may be disappointed with it, but it remains my vote.
I agree I would rather see spending on the military, but Harper reiterates he is going to increase our military presence, or improve security. I don’t agree with adding to our military until our existing equipment has been brought on par with the rest of the militarized world. Then again we need to ask ourselves the reason for adding to our military? Do we plan to move beyond peacekeeping? Are we going to invade a country? I would rather see stronger ties with the US military than necessarily a lot of money on our own.
Further to that, Harper promises lower taxes for all Canadians. How does he propose to spend money on the military if he is cutting taxes already? Take money from health or education? No matter how you slice it, there will be broken promises if the Conservatives get into power. They can’t spend and cut taxes at the same time.
The gun registry is a good Canadian idea, but was implemented terribly. Adscam was bad, but it was a previous administration (though Martin was part of it, the fact remains, different people pulling the strings). Let’s not forget that the last Conservative government had its fair share of scandals, and implemented GST after explicity promising not to raise taxes.
I have chosen to focus on the Conservatives here, because they are the most likely to win, but there are many sore points with the NDP too. For a quick document outlining some reason why the Conservatives aren’t all that great, look here: http://www.canadiancontent.net/commtr/article_688.html.
I for one am not prepared to punish Martin by bringing Harper or Layton into power. And when it comes right down to it, the PM is the one in charge. Canada has relatively few backstops in this regard. And having said that, I would much rather have a proven former Finance Minister than a "Canadian Republican" Harper or a loud Layton.
I’m quite disappointed that the Green Party didn’t win. I mean, I never expected them to, but in a campaign full of telling us why NOT to vote for the other guys, why shouldn’t we have picked a party who maybe is genuinely interested in making our country better. I’m definitely anti-Conservative, especially when it comes to privatization of certain essential services. And I’m also kind of anti-Liberal, when they decide to spend spend spend in order to make us forget that they’ve screwed up. However, I do think that Paul Martin needs to be given a chance to run a government in which he was the elected leader, not simply put there when the old leader left. I think he was given leadership of the party at a very inopportune time, but had no choice but to call an election. The sponsorship scandal hurt the Liberals bid for a majority government, but the results of last night’s election show that the rest of the country (except for the retards in the west) feel that the conservatives do not have the means to properly govern our nation, and they expressed their non-confidence in Harper’s ability to lead. I think this campaign would have been A LOT different if Belinda Stronach had won the leadership. The only conservative statement I agreed with all campaign was about military spending. Other than that, I personally have no use for them, and I think that Canadians in general voted out of the fear of a Conservative government. I think that says a lot more than the Liberals only winning a minority. (Yes, I did vote Green. I liked their platform, and now they get federal funding for the next campaign.) I heard an interesting comparison. The Greens got 4.3% of the vote last night, or around 600,000. The Reform Party (seen as a radical fringe party) in 1988 only gained 272,000 votes, and then proceeded to win 52 seats in 1993. I think that says a lot for the way our voters are realizing that campaign promises are empty, and that it’s time to get behind a party that may actually be willing to do something for the good of the country. And while the Liberals wasted billions of dollars, it’s interesting to see the people forget that Mulroney’s administration left the country with a legacy. Yep, that’s right folks $42 billion per year of debt. And who was the man who turned our economic recession around? Paul Martin. Coincidence? I think not. In any case, Mr. Male, you’ll be able to vote Conservative again in less than 2 years, but we’ll see how it plays out at that time.
I do not believe he voted Conservative megs…but I agree, I think many people realize the Conservatives are not yet ready to lead the country.
What I think is interesting is that the combined PC’s and Alliance had more popular vote than the current Conservatives.
This election really doesn’t matter now, I am convinced, because we’ll go back to the polls in a year or two and the Liberals will probably win a majority.