During a rather boring history class today, I was browsing around the CBC website. I stumbled across a link to www.voteforenvironment.ca, which instructs voters how to vote strategically in their ridings to defeat the Conservatives - or at the very least, leave them stuck with a minority government. What are you going to do now Harper? Start whining and call another election when the Opposition actually starts doing its job and ... *gasp* ... opposing you?
Anyways, I found this website interesting. A group has actually taken the time to research the poll numbers of all 308 ridings in Canada, and analyzed them in a way to tell Canadians how to vote to defeat Harper. Of course, I looked up my riding, and they told me to vote for whoever I want because the Conservative candidate is going to win anyways. Too bad nobody in my riding has actually looked at what she's done over the past 2 years. She's had two speeches. One was to announce that her daughter was valedictorian. The other was to talk about some special red scarf day, and she got the name of the day wrong. Brilliant, let's re-elect her!
But ever since Harper's extremely arrogant campaign, along with the economic crisis in the States, it appears Conservative support is starting to wane. People are actually starting to open their eyes to this man. He arrogantly called an election knowing that an economic crisis was looming in the States, and figuring if he ran on a platform of "Trust Me, I'm an Economist" people would give him a majority. Sorry Steve, but every other party has economists in it too. You're not special.
He even has the nerve to say during one of the debates that he doesn't believe in personal attacks. Um.. excuse me? Were you not the one who authorized a Conservative ad showing a puffin pooping on Stephane Dion? Have you not been running ads for the past 6 months - all with the same picture of Dion - using his personal qualities to tell us that he is not a leader? All Harper has done is personal attacks! Hypocrite.
This is the man who has given (in the words of Layton, I'm not sure if they're correct) millions of dollars in corporate tax cuts. He has cut funding to the arts, and given that money to big oil. He has brought down our surplus to lower the GST, but by doing that he has done absolutely nothing to improve the social welfare of Canada. He has followed Bush's lead on every major foreign policy issue. He has attempted to bolster Republican support in the American election by allowing his party to leak confidential Democrat NAFTA information. Meddling in someone else's election ... nice Harper. I can hear you slowly taking on that Texas accent now.
So to all those Canadians out there reading this, I urge you to visit that website. See who you can cast your vote for if you don't want another 4 years of Harper bullying and corporate tax cuts at the expense of us. He tells us that our economy is fine while the TSX is falling faster than Liberal support. Do we really need that? Can Canada's place in the world survive that? At the very least, let's elect a minority government to hold him accountable for his actions.
