I was listening in the car today to a CBC phone-in discussing the election. One caller made the following point, which I found very telling:
“I took the CBC Political compass, and came up as Green. I like the Green platform, I agree with the Green party’s policies. But I could never vote for them because it I can’t take the risk of voting for a third party and letting the Conservatives win.”
This represents to me one of the big misunderstandings of our political process. We need to remind ourselves that we do not vote for parties, we vote for people. We are not electing a prime minister, or a party, but a LOCAL representative.
Driving through the city I see lots of boards with peoples names on it. So I know that Patrick Brown is ‘blue’, Colin Wilson is ‘red’, Myrna Clark is ‘orange’ and so on, and I find myself wondering whether a person’s character can really be summed up by a an HTML colour code. Is Patrick Brown more interesting than #00008B Dark Blue? Surely Colin’s family knows that he has more depth of character than #FF0000 Red?
We elect people, not parties. As I’ve said before, and will say again, what matters is the competence and integrity of the individual. I don’t know how I’ll vote yet on may 2nd, but I do know that I’ll make my decision based on my best assessment of the character and abilities of the candidates, not the color of their signs. Anything less is to ignore the humanity of both the candidates and the people they represent.