Election in Canada - May 2nd

I want to pay special attention to the federal election; especially in the Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam riding where I live. To stay up-to-date on anything anyone on the campaign trail says, try here.

The first thing I noticed when I went looking is that the Liberals and Greens have no declared candidates in this riding. Come on people - this election was a surprise, right? The NDP has Mark Ireland, and the incumbent since 2004 is James Moore (Reform cum Conservative).

Now, who to vote for?

Conservatives
I'm pretty confident that my friend John will be voting Conservative. He has a coffee mug at home that says "I'm a scary Conservative with a hidden agenda". That's just it ... I think there is a real right-wing, pro-business, anti-organizing agenda at work; although they'd never say as much. I think a corporate tax cut is sufficient evidence for this ... cutting taxes when our government is up to it's eyebrows in red ink shows real arrogance. I know that the other parties are jumping all over this one - and they happen to have the majority of Canadians on their side this time. Trickle down economics don't work. If you need proof, just look south of the border to our bankrupt neighbor. I won't say anything about the attack ads except that they sicken me and have the opposite to their intended effect.

Liberals
I think the Liberal leader suffers from what I call the "Jimmy Carter Syndrome". You get a guy in control of the party that's too intellectual - and thinks too much about all the angles to a problem. What you end up with is fodder for the opposition and the media, and your ability to lead is questioned by everybody. The bright side is, Ignatieff will do great as a philanthropist once out of  politics.

NDP
Jack Layton is clearly the best spoken, most articulate of the big three leaders. Personally I think he leans too far to the left, just as Harper leans to far to the right. Too bad he wasn't a Liberal - he'd easily be the most electable in the field.

Coalition
There's all this chat surrounding the Liberals about a "coalition" government. In my view, if this was to be embraced rather than shunned, the NDP-Liberal-Bloc coalition would win. I actually like this idea, and I think most Canadians are pragmatic enough to agree with me. After all, we've had a minority government since 2004, and we seemed to have weathered the international recession storm quite well - shows that working with your neighbors instead of burning down their houses is actually a civilized way of getting along.

Green
Unfortunately, the Green Party finds itself in the political wilderness, much the same place as the Reform Party was in 1986-87. What the Reform Party had at the time, though, was a visceral dislike to business as usual in Ottawa, and a voter base of like minded, action-oriented voters. The Greens don't have a motivated base in numbers sufficient to influence anything. If somehow they were able to squeeze themselves in to this mysterious "coalition" so that a vote for them would be a vote for the future government, then we'd have something!

Final Thoughts
It's good that I've got until May 2nd to figure this thing out. Right now, I don't know who to vote for ... the under-aged, under-life-experienced incumbent? Some left-leaning guy I don't know? The environmental responsible protest vote that won't count? The un-named Liberal? Stay tuned.