A Birthday Note

To matociquala, a belated B-day greeting! If I remember a'right, you had a good one, this past weekend...?

To fajrdrako, I understand today's your day! Hoping that yours ends up as good as it can be!

More on other stuff later...

Election Musings, September 2007

In the course of trying to track down info on the local all-candidates debate for the upcoming Ontario provincial elections, I stumbled across this posting of my own from the 2006 federal election. It's strange, looking back now. I'm not sure that we got either what we needed or what we deserved in Ottawa-Orleans out of that election. Time will tell, I suppose.

I didn't see the Ontario party leaders' debate on TV, partly because of the denial of Green Party leader Frank De Jong's proper place at those debates. I'm not a Green Party supporter or member, but I do feel that it was improper to freeze him out of that part of the process, just as it was improper to do likewise to Elizabeth May last year for the federal debates. It smells of something very Wrong to do this sort of thing to the leader of the Next Big Party on the political landscape of Canada, whether I agree with any or all or none of their platform at all.

I hope we don't see a repeat of this behaviour in the next federal election, whenever it's finally held.

Moving on: mixed-member proportional vs. first-past-the-post. We're having a referendum in Ontario on that, set for the same day as the provincial election itself. Given that the former will decide the former's future rules of engagement, it seems appropriate enough scheduling.

I know that this particular referendum makes the usual excuses for not voting at all - something which a couple of my more distant acquaintances are openly advocating - even more distasteful to me. There's more riding on this one than your average election or referendum. I voted on the Charlottetown Accord Referendum, because it made sense to make sure I had a say in my own future at that time. It still makes sense now, for the same reasons as then.

Back to you...

PS: Here's the CBC page on my home riding for Ontario Votes 2007. Not much there yet...