LONG POST WARNING
As will happen with any election cycle, my social media is lit up with fevered conversation about tomorrow's 2019 federal election. People ask me for my political opinion all the time, so here it is.
To be clear, I'm not voting and I don't care what you think of me as a result. As someone who was involved in politics for over a decade and has seen behind the curtain I simply cannot justify voting in this election.
The reasoning is simple—I'm not insane! We all know the old adage, "Insanity is best described as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result." That is what we in modern democratic societies are doing. Every 4 years we beat our heads against several walls for "our guy" despite knowing our guy is a facsimile of an old guy.
You might be thinking that I'm just disappointed in my guy. Nay! In fact, I don't have a guy. My vote is easy to secure since I am not tied to any particular party. I've worked on both sides of the aisle and would definitely consider myself a centrist.
The Leaders
I call Justin Trudeau, Harvey Dent because I know first-hand how two-faced he can be.
Andrew Scheer is just as big of a liar (just about different things) and remarkably unlikeable.
Jagmeet Singh seems like a cool enough guy but his platform reads like any NDP platform and the party scares me since they always seem to spend money like they have a money tree out back, but in reality the money tree done died. I want to vote for Singh and if he would have challenged Trudeau for Liberal leadership, I may have.
Yves-Francois Blanchet is the leader of a party built on the divisiveness of Canada and I will never trust them.
Elizabeth May has a great message in saving the environment but once again, another election, and not enough of a platform or candidates to make any real change.
Maxime Bernier scares me because he's drawn some pretty polarizing lines and his message seems vetted by a PR company that has watched Trump do his thing.
My Predicted Outcome
I have been predicting for over a year that Trudeau will win a minority government because despite all of his faults, Scheer isn't likeable enough to sway the swing voters, I believe the NDP have a long way to go before ever holding the highest office in Canada, and the "minor" parties can't win. That's just my opinion. I'm not sitting in the living rooms of every family in Canada so I could very well be wrong. I don't think I am, but it's possible. This is not a cross I'm willing to die on.
Why I Can't Support Any of the Leaders
The real purpose of this blog is coming, and is deeply rooted in what I KNOW to be true. I'm not voting for any of these leaders because none of them are going to solve the actual problem that needs to be fixed. The leaders are not the problem ... it's the system of politics. We need a vote to decide how we want our democracy to be run in this modern era.
Everything about our system is archaic. Our elections cost wasted money. Our leaders on any side of the aisle can be picked apart as scam artists. And, do you feel like you're better off now as an individual or group than you were 10, 20, 30 years ago? I know I don't. Sure, my life has improved but that's a result of my hard work and has very little do with who has been elected.
I just want one party/leader to come out and say the following:
We will offer real election reform in the form of a single website with platforms side-by-side written by an independent council and a mail-out form of that website if requested. No ads, no debates, no bullshit. I want to simply know what the party stands for, who the leaders are, and what they want to do.
We will stand up for the right of the individual as long as it doesn't affect the whole negatively. Be gay, be weird, make a decision about a pregnancy and handle your business as is best for your situation, own a gun safely, balance your cheque book, cut your glass diagonally even though it doesn't really make a difference, swing, believe in God or don't ... you do you. If you start to hurt the whole then we have to talk. And no, your neighbour being gay doesn't hurt you ... grow up.
We will make the hard choices to balance our books. You won't like some of what we have to do but just know in an effort to be a profitable country we will cut what we need to. However, essential services such as judicial, health, education, infrastructure, protection/defence, veteran support, pensions, etc will all be maintained as needed. That is, after all, the foremost job of any government in a democracy.
We will eliminate ambiguity in the books.
We will undergo massive tax reform and create creative revenue solutions while looking inward at ourselves before cuts to what the people need.
We will slow our rate of immigrate intake and foreign aid, just until we fix our homelessness, mental health, and other abuses. Once our social infrastructure is above reproach we can increate our intake again as immigrants are often valuable contributors to a growing country. The only reason I suggest this is because we act morally superior to other nations and we take in immigrants without consideration for the fact that we don't have the social infrastructure to support either.
We will lead the way in climate change without leading the way in climate tax. There are plenty of alternative solutions.
We won't be assholes, but we won't be pushovers either.
I need a leader to say these things before I'll get out and vote again because honestly, if you'd seen what I've seen you would do the same. Why vote for the lesser of 2 evils? I prefer to send the evils packing! All of them!
Why I Wrote This
I wrote this blog because of this post:
Trudeau, you didn’t get my vote first time around and you certainly didn’t get it this time either! Here are some reasons why:
Things to consider before You vote:
Your minister of finance engaged in insider trading. Also forgot about his villa in France.
You blew the Asia Pacific deal.
You blew the helicopter deal with the Philippines.
You blew the deal with China.
You blew the deal with Europe.
You invited "irregular" immigration and the taxpayer foots the enormous bill for it.
You alienated the United States – our largest trading partner.
At the G7 you pledged $400 million to Education around the world along with another $180 million to the Global Partnership for Education in Europe. None of it is going to fix our messed up school systems here at home. Meanwhile education costs are skyrocketing for our youth making university a mountain too high for many to climb.
You pledged $241 million to Family Planning around the world including a $20 million donation to the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation (because they have integrity!). This all happened while you told vets that they were asking too much.
You pledged $2.65 billion to climate change at the Commonwealth Leaders Summit and now you’re trying to bully the provinces into new taxes to pay for this pledge.
You pledged $300 million to the Rohingya Refugee crisis while we have a refugee crisis of our own flooding into Quebec that you won't address.
You pledged $125 million to Caribbean Reconstruction while our own infrastructure in cities is falling apart.
You pledged $650 million to Sexual and Reproductive health in Haiti and around the globe wanting safer abortions for woman while many women in our own country are left without a family doctor.
You pledged $840 million to Syria for Humanitarian Assistance when half the native reserves in our country don't have clean drinking water.
You gave $10.5 million to a convicted...CONVICTED terrorist in a backroom deal. You intentionally paid it out in a way that prevented the widow of the killed soldier from pursuing it.
You spent $4.5 billion on a 65 year old pipeline, and now the courts have ruled it shut down. Now it's back on (at a delay cost of $250 million) - good investment for Canada you said? (And KM uses that money to build a pipeline in Texas)
You pressured Jody Wilson Raybould repeatedly & INAPPROPRIATELY with several different high ranking officials to offer SNC Lavalin a DPA instead of prosecution for repeated & sustained corruption AFTER the former AG had determined they were ineligible for such a deal. You lied about the above having ever taken place. Then you obstructed the investigation into this obstruction of justice.
You replaced Canada’s old F-18s with Australia’s old F-18s.
Your bizarre love of all things Castro.
You imposed tough regulations and taxes on oil from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland but not oil from Saudi Arabia. Every new project has to undergo strict environmental assessments...except cement plants in Quebec.
You said that a proposed pipeline must consider “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” (what does that even mean???)
You chase foreign companies (and their investment capital) out of the country like they have the plague.
You chased our WW1 soldiers out of our national anthem... lest we forget.
You called small business owners “tax cheats”.
People voice concern over money spent on illegal immigration and you call them intolerant racists.
We have an equalization program, but you give half of it to one province.
You spent $8 million on a skating rink (vanity project) when Canada's largest skating rink is 500 meters away.
You added tens of billions to the national debt while lying to Canada's face about it. Balance the budget in 2019? Now we’re looking at 2040.
You groped a woman and when caught and said she experienced it differently.
You elbowed a female MP while dragging another MP by the arm in a petulant fit.
Peoplekind? (international embarrassment)
You got India to invest $250 million in Canada but we have to invest $750 million in India first.
You said returning terrorists will be an extraordinarily powerful voice for Canada.
You fought to let terrorists keep their Canadian citizenship.
You spent $212,234 on artwork for the cover of the 2017 budget report.
You spent upwards to $348,000 on food and alcohol in five flights on our government’s plane. On your G20 trip to Argentina, you spent $103,000 on food and alcohol alone. How is that even possible?
You gave Canadian taxpayers' money to Hamas.
You voice outrage over fake racist attacks and say nothing about real terrorist attacks.
You took 10 vacations in a single year. Who does this?
You spent a little over $1.5 million on the trip to India that did nothing but worsen ties. Plus paid over $17,000 to bring an Indian chef to India to cook Indian cuisine. And to top it off, invited a convicted attempted murderer to diner and posed for pics with him.
And you’re the only PM convicted of ethics violations. (multiple times in fact)
You destroyed the career of one of Canada’s honest military leaders to cover up possible massive corruption in ship building contracts.
You invited Joshua Boyle, an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault and unlawful confinement of his wife for a photoshoot in the Office of The Prime Minister.
You threaten to sue the leader of the opposition then chicken out when you realized that your alleged crimes will be exposed in court.
You offer over $600 million dollars in subsidies to failing mainstream media outlets if they can prove to be trustworthy. You put a union who vows to destroy your opposition in charge of selecting these new “trusted” sources to receive funding. You could school the Russians in election interference.
You pay off your friends to engage in election ads for you and get Elections Canada to pay for it.
$13 million to Loblaws for new refrigerators. You made public statements of deep admiration for Chinese communism.
You wore preposterous, inappropriate costumes during a state visit to India, paid for by Canadians.
Almost $13 billion in promises right before calling the election.
Blackface. 3 times. Wow.
What moral, functioning Canadian human could possible justify voting for you?
When they said you weren’t ready, they were right....
Jesus. What a slanted view that has gone viral. Here's the thing. You could write this about any politician and that's my point. This is why this blog will be so long. Let me write it out from the center position. Now, here's the thing; there's not enough data about the NDP federally or the other parties to present all of the counter points so I'll stick with the parties that I can reference to; Cons and Libs. It's Conservative voters sharing the post anyway.
Hey, Trudeau and Sheer. Neither of you will get my vote this time around. Here are some reasons why:
Trudeau: Your minister of finance engaged in insider trading. Also forgot about his villa in France.
Sheer: Tory operative Michael Sona was given jail time for his role in the robocalls scam.
Trudeau: You blew the Asia Pacific deal.
Sheer: Your party blew the US steel deal with the US.
Trudeau: You blew the helicopter deal with the Philippines.
Sheer: Compromised relationship with France.
Trudeau: You blew the deal with China.
Sheer: Your party blew the deal with China.
Trudeau: You blew the deal with Europe.
Sheer: Your party blew a deal with the UN.
Trudeau: You invited "irregular" immigration and the taxpayer foots the enormous bill for it.
Sheer: Your party made cuts in some places and bolstered spending in other which is "irregular" immigration and the taxpayer foot the enormous bill for it.
Trudeau: You alienated the United States – our largest trading partner.
Sheer: Your party alienated the United States — our largest trading partner when Obama took office.
Trudeau: At the G7 you pledged $400 million to Education around the world along with another $180 million to the Global Partnership for Education in Europe. None of it is going to fix our messed up school systems here at home. Meanwhile education costs are skyrocketing for our youth making university a mountain too high for many to climb.
Sheer: Your party has dedicated billions in foreign aid to solve problems we still have at home like education, climate related items, etc. In fact, foreign aid spending under Harper grew in comparison to the previous Liberal government.
Trudeau: You pledged $241 million to Family Planning around the world including a $20 million donation to the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation (because they have integrity!). This all happened while you told vets that they were asking too much.
Sheer: Your party pledged wasteful spending initiatives, all while growing the class gap.
Trudeau: You pledged $2.65 billion to climate change at the Commonwealth Leaders Summit and now you’re trying to bully the provinces into new taxes to pay for this pledge.
Sheer: Your party had to pay for peace with the provinces and even then you had to bully provinces on the topic of transfers.
Trudeau: You pledged $300 million to the Rohingya Refugee crisis while we have a refugee crisis of our own flooding into Quebec that you won't address.
Sheer: Your party pledged hundreds of millions in aid to the Iraq and Syrian refugee crisis while we have a refugee crisis of our own flooding into Quebec that wasn't addressed.
Trudeau: You pledged $125 million to Caribbean Reconstruction while our own infrastructure in cities is falling apart.
Sheer: Your party pledged $150 million to Jordan for development while our own infrastructure in cities was falling apart.
Trudeau: You pledged $650 million to Sexual and Reproductive health in Haiti and around the globe wanting safer abortions for woman while many women in our own country are left without a family doctor.
Sheer: Your party pledged $1.1 billion to maternal and child health in developing countries around the globe while many women in our own country are left without a family doctor.
Trudeau: You pledged $840 million to Syria for Humanitarian Assistance when half the native reserves in our country don't have clean drinking water.
Sheer: Your party did pretty much the same thing with slightly different numbers.
Trudeau: You gave $10.5 million to a convicted...CONVICTED terrorist in a backroom deal. You intentionally paid it out in a way that prevented the widow of the killed soldier from pursuing it.
Sheer: Your party's actions directly led to the deal that Trudeau pushed forward.
Trudeau: You spent $4.5 billion on a 65 year old pipeline, and now the courts have ruled it shut down. Now it's back on (at a delay cost of $250 million) - good investment for Canada you said? (And KM uses that money to build a pipeline in Texas)
Sheer: Your party spent billions on pipeline deals and oil sand regulations that never came to fruition.
Trudeau: You pressured Jody Wilson Raybould repeatedly & INAPPROPRIATELY with several different high ranking officials to offer SNC Lavalin a DPA instead of prosecution for repeated & sustained corruption AFTER the former AG had determined they were ineligible for such a deal. You lied about the above having ever taken place. Then you obstructed the investigation into this obstruction of justice.
Sheer: Conservatives secretly recorded political opponents and also used agent provocateur techniques to try and entrap them. A sting operation against Marlo Raynolds, a Liberal candidate in Alberta, was backed by then employment minister Jason Kenney.
Trudeau: You replaced Canada’s old F-18s with Australia’s old F-18s.
Sheer: Your party sat on its hands as the military begged for new planes, patching up old ones. As of Oct 20, 2015, your party had yet to make any deals for F-35's or other planes.
Trudeau: Your bizarre love of all things Castro.
Sheer: You have a bizarre relationship with just about everyone. You love Trump but call him out constantly on things you previously agreed with just months earlier, then you commend him only to bash him. I don't get it.
Trudeau: You imposed tough regulations and taxes on oil from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland but not oil from Saudi Arabia. Every new project has to undergo strict environmental assessments...except cement plants in Quebec.
Sheer: Ahem.
Trudeau: You said that a proposed pipeline must consider “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” (what does that even mean???)
Sheer: You have a hardline stance on abortion but then leave the door open for your MPs to make a fuss. So you are for or against? Tough to tell when you let the 4th line take the head. What does your policy even mean at this point then?
Trudeau: You chase foreign companies (and their investment capital) out of the country like they have the plague.
Sheer: You're a nationalist like Trump so wouldn't you do the exact same thing? Harper embraced foreign companies to the point of hurting the Canadian business owner. So which is worse?
Trudeau: You chased our WW1 soldiers out of our national anthem... lest we forget.
Sheer: Medical files of Sean Bruyea, a strong advocate for veterans’ rights, were leaked in a case that privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart described as “alarming.” Veterans Affairs Canada ombudsman Pat Stogran was dumped after criticizing the government.
Trudeau: You called small business owners “tax cheats”.
Sheer: Your party renounced tax benefits for small business. They were a bit more poetic about it though.
Trudeau: People voice concern over money spent on illegal immigration and you call them intolerant racists.
Sheer: You stand by candidates with racist and hateful pasts that are well documented. Your party has constantly used the same tactics Trudeau uses with racism on climate change believers.
Trudeau: We have an equalization program, but you give half of it to one province.
Sheer: A lot of money went to Alberta and Ontario over other provinces in deals that were supposed to be proportionate. The Conservatives have been pretty equal in their inequality though so the confusion kept it quieter.
Trudeau: You spent $8 million on a skating rink (vanity project) when Canada's largest skating rink is 500 meters away.
Sheer: In the past your party has spent $2 million on a fake lake and $750 million on advertising. You literally can go on TV at anytime and state your case for free!
Trudeau: You added tens of billions to the national debt while lying to Canada's face about it. Balance the budget in 2019? Now we’re looking at 2040.
Sheer: Your party's fiscal record with 9.5 years in government was a total clusterfuck.
Trudeau: You groped a woman and when caught and said she experienced it differently.
Sheer: Admittedly, we don't know of you doing anything like this but you're not PM yet. No one would have guessed this would come up about Trudeau during the last election.
Trudeau: You elbowed a female MP while dragging another MP by the arm in a petulant fit.
Sheer: You led the charge on this subject and it blew up in your face. Who's the snowflake now?
Trudeau: Peoplekind? (international embarrassment)
Sheer: Beyak was an embarrassment and Scheer took waaaaaay too long to deal with the whole "trade (their) status cards for Canadian citizenship" gaff. Sure, these aren't Scheer's own words but he backed them through his actions.
Trudeau: You got India to invest $250 million in Canada but we have to invest $750 million in India first.
Sheer: How many bad deals have the Conservatives made? Just as many as the Liberals. How many free trade agreements failed under Harper? 11.
Trudeau: You said returning terrorists will be an extraordinarily powerful voice for Canada.
Sheer: If we're going to take comments out of context and just play dirty pool then let's look at your comments about LGBT rights.
Trudeau: You fought to let terrorists keep their Canadian citizenship.
Sheer: While Trudeau should have been held accountable for those comments you don't seem to take a position on much and that's scarier. Do you support or denounce many of the items discussed here already? I'm not sure, because through your own statements, neither are you. At least we could tell Trudeau to go fuck himself regarding this issue. We can't do the same with you because we have no idea where you stand. Grow a pair.
Trudeau: You spent $212,234 on artwork for the cover of the 2017 budget report.
Sheer: In 2012, Agriculture Canada gave $826,000 to Cardinal Meat Specialists Ltd. in Brampton, Ont. to help produce “a higher quality sausage that is more resistant to splitting or bursting while cooking.” This was your party that did this.
Trudeau: You spent upwards to $348,000 on food and alcohol in five flights on our government’s plane. On your G20 trip to Argentina, you spent $103,000 on food and alcohol alone. How is that even possible?
Sheer: Taxpayers forked out at least $45,000 for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2011 Labour Day weekend trip to Manhattan, which included pricey New York Yankees tickets and a Broadway show. Harper was accompanied by his daughter Rachel, four staffers, and guests. Documents obtained by the CBC under Access to Information revealed a portion of the excursion’s costs — $34,633 for the use of the Challenger Jet and another $11,026 for the expenses of staff.
Trudeau: You gave Canadian taxpayers' money to Hamas.
Sheer: See previous points.
Trudeau: You voice outrage over fake racist attacks and say nothing about real terrorist attacks.
Sheer: You voiced outrage over a fake elbowing scandal with Trudeau and again, you don't have a concise position on a lot of things so we'll have to wait and see what you will do. Oh right, you won't win so never mind.
Trudeau: You took 10 vacations in a single year. Who does this?
We can't really look at anyone else but we can look at history. Many politicians do this, including Trump who called out Obama. Harper didn't because he didn't like travelling all that much, but politicians take constant trips and part of that "10" number is fake.
Trudeau: You spent a little over $1.5 million on the trip to India that did nothing but worsen ties. Plus paid over $17,000 to bring an Indian chef to India to cook Indian cuisine. And to top it off, invited a convicted attempted murderer to dinner and posed for pics with him.
Sheer: On the subject of wasteful spending that hurt internal relations taxpayers fronted a $4.5-million bill to buy brand new dress uniforms for Canadian soldiers and naval officers after the Harper government announced a historic return to World War II-era ranks and insignia.
Trudeau: And you’re the only PM convicted of ethics violations. (multiple times in fact)
Sheer: True (kinda). However, under Harper the Conservative government was hit with all kinds of ethics and criminal violations. Some are listed here. Stands to reason that Harper just let others take the fall. In fact, every government we've had in the last 30 years had had ethics violations.
Trudeau: You destroyed the career of one of Canada’s honest military leaders to cover up possible massive corruption in ship building contracts.
Sheer: On an Iraq visit, Harper was caught lying to try and cover up the leak of a promo video, which constituted a security breach. The PMO, noted a National Post editorial, “stumbled from blunder to evasion and falsehood in the service of shamelessly manipulative partisanship, especially in using our troops as PR props.” Your party, you wear these issues unless you deny them.
Trudeau: You invited Joshua Boyle, an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault and unlawful confinement of his wife for a photoshoot in the Office of The Prime Minister.
Sheer: Um ... you worked with Larry Spencer.
Trudeau: You threaten to sue the leader of the opposition then chickened out when you realized that your alleged crimes will be exposed in court.
If any other leader wins we'll see what they do. History though ... for all parties shows this is par for the course.
Trudeau: You offer over $600 million dollars in subsidies to failing mainstream media outlets if they can prove to be trustworthy. You put a union who vows to destroy your opposition in charge of selecting these new “trusted” sources to receive funding. You could school the Russians in election interference.
Sheer: On the flipside. Journalists have been hard-pressed to recall another time when controls put on them were so tight. At the Conservatives’ 2013 Calgary convention, reporters wrote of being harassed and penned in at every turn by the PMO’s command and control system. In his book Killing The Messenger, journalist Mark Bourrie charts the many examples of new limits on freedom of speech introduced in the Harper era. Again, your party and you haven't spoken out against these sorts of practices.
Trudeau: You pay off your friends to engage in election ads for you and get Elections Canada to pay for it.
Seriously? If that's a part of your debate, leave now. Exit stage right because every politician in office has done the same. It's par for the course. Several media reports told how the Conservatives used taxpayer money for partisan political advertising in record quantity, costing the public treasury $750 million when Harper became PM. In one instance, the Tories spent lavishly on ads for the promotion of a jobs grant program that had yet to be made public or presented to parliament or the provinces. Even more nakedly partisan, a mailed blast, charged to the taxpayers, targeting Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau: $13 million to Loblaws for new refrigerators.
Sheer: Taxpayers fronted $47,000 for a 2010 Tory press conference during which then-Defence Minister Peter MacKay posed for a “hero shot” in a fake F-35 fighter jet built by manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which was brought in from Texas for the special event. This is a small number but just one in a list of hundreds of Conservative examples of wasteful spending. Remember that $750 mill in unnecessary ad spend?
Trudeau: You made public statements of deep admiration for Chinese communism.
Sheer: You made public statements against LGBT.
Trudeau: Almost $13 billion in promises right before calling the election.
Ummm ... this is par for the course. Literally, I can't even think of an election without this tactic by the incumbent on any level of government.
Trudeau: Blackface. 3 Times. Wow!
Sheer: If you're going to bring up history then let's look at your history against LGBT, abortion and maternal rights. All gross, and as gross just in different ways as Harvey Dent's blackface photos.
Conclusion
For the purposes of this blog I'm not going to even address how ridiculous some of this list is because it just serves to my point. Also, it's a rigid list. If you look at the history of Canadian politics it's really hard to say who was better or worse than any of the other parties. Pick a topic and you can debate the Liberals were better. Pick another topic and you can argue that the Conservatives were better. It's a value proposition at this point.
Modern democratic politics is broken because it's not modern at all. We have no baseline for success and everything is all about opinion or the tom tom's beating in the street. We no longer hold our leaders accountable for facts because we have no idea what the hell the truth is anymore.
For example, Trudeau's "elbowing of a female MP" was completely blown out of proportion. I know it, you know it, and the female MP even knows it. Hell, the author of this list knows it.
Opinion doesn't belong in politics or the news.
What moral, functioning Canadian human could possible justify voting for any of you?
When they said you weren’t ready, they were right. None of you have been ready or will be ready because our system encourages your bullshit.
Electing in these guys won't change anything until we change what gets them elected in the first place and how they are held accountable.