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An election day quandry
I think I am screwed. I strongly favour the Conservatives but unfortunately I live in Bev Oda's riding. She has lost my confidence during her tenure by not helping to address the black market cigarette issue. She ignored me when I asked her to make some sense of the federal government's failure to respond to the situation in Caledonia. I asked her to put a private member’s bill to suspend payments of taxpayers' dollars to the CBC until they comply with the Freedom of Information Commissioner. When I talk to my neighbours, they agree, we can't support her to represent us in the upcoming election. So who do I vote for now?
Gordon Skinner
Uxbridge
We received the above letter last weekend, after Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepted the inevitable and (no doubt encouraged by polls which place him comfortably in the lead) went to the Governor General and asked him to dissolve Parliament and send the country to the polls.
Mr. Skinner and our columnist Mr. Varley (at right), for very different reasons, seem to be facing a perplexing challenge on May 2. Mr. Varley wants to register a protest vote against the incumbent, but isn’t sure where to place his X, since he’s not a fan of party politics. Mr. Skinner would like to place his X where he always has, with the Tories, but can’t bring himself to vote again for Ms. Oda (though his complaints about her vary considerably from Mr. Varley’s).
We strongly suspect that these two gentlemen are not alone, either in Durham or across the country. There are undoubtedly a lot of traditional Conservative voters who are having trouble ignoring the way Mr. Harper treats our parliamentary institutions. There are probably legions of rabid Liberals who wish they could be inspired by a dynamic speaker like a Pearson or Trudeau, rather than the insipid leaders they’ve been stuck with lately.
There are thousands of died-in-the-wool NDPers who are wondering what their party has to do to gain on a national scale the electoral success it has had in many provinces. And the enthusiastic champions of the Greens are no doubt realizing that even if their leader manages to succeed on the west coast, the defeat of proportional representation has forever doomed their party to the margins.
So if you’re a little soured on the party your heart traditionally follows, and none of the others get you excited either, why not do exactly what you would do on your municipal ballot - vote for the individual? Why not ignore the affiliation beside the name, and choose the person you feel would be most effective in Ottawa, and best represent the interests of the people of rural and small-town Durham, even if that person is an independent?
To do that, of course, you might want to meet all the candidates, and see them beside one another. And your best chance to do that is at our all-candidate forum scheduled for April 17. See page 2 next week for the location, and we look forward to seeing you there.
One last word on Bev Oda. Mr. Skinner and Mr. Varley haven’t got much good to say about her, but at least give her credit for leaving her name on the ballot. She’s going to face a lot of hard questions on the doorstep. The fact she’s willing to go through with it isn’t, we suspect, about wanting to hold on to power. Maybe it’s more about redemption. And if the voters give her another chance, we’re curious about the next chapter.
