So, once again a federal election approaches. I’m going to take this opportunity to observe and comment on the campaign over the following weeks.
Rather than just regurgitate the talking heads on parliament hill, I want to approach this from a more local perspective. With all the talk about Harper, Ignatieff and Layton, it’s easy to forget that we don’t actually elect a Prime Minister. All we do is elect a local Member of Parliament to represent our interests. The fact that they are affiliated with a political party is incidental, rather than essential, to our political system. It’s worth remembering that MPs can, and do, cross party lines and vote against their party on occasion. So I’m going to focus initially on my local candidates. I live in the riding of Barrie, and here’s what I’ve been able to gather so far about the local candidates.
- PoliticallyBarrie.ca seems to be a useful agegration of information about Barrie politics.
- Our current MP is Patrick Brown.
- The candidate for the Barrie Liberals is Colin Wilson.
- The green party candidate is Erich-Jacoby Hawkins
- I’m not sure who the NDP candidate is – here is the relevant page on the NDP site.
I’ll add to this list as I gather more information.
As I’ve argued before, I’m convinced that the two most important qualities needed in any elected representative are competence and integrity. I’ll be keeping these two character traits in mind as I observe this campaign.