How do you spell fun? E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N!

Even though we’ve heard the Liberals say it’s time to take down Harper before, this time it looks like Mr. Ignatieff has really backed himself into a corner.  It’s go time Canada, we may just have our fourth election in five years.  The frustration is not only potential voter burnout (the 2008 election had the lowest turnout since the early 50’s, when it seems Canadians were more worried about making more Canadians than voting ), but the amazing animosity our two ‘major’ parties have for each other.

Really the Liberals and Conservatives need to;
a) provide Canadians with a means of choosing between them by each offering a solid vision for the country with strategic policy goals, and;
b) start acting like adults, realizing that where their vision and goals align it doesn’t matter who is in ‘power’ and work together to achieve their common goals or we’re going to be stuck in the minority trap for the foreseeable future.

Looks like we’ll have another election, with another minority that stumbles along until internal polling gives the opposition the delusion that they can move into the nicer offices on the hill.  Rinse and repeat every year or two, slowly eroding the political capital of our Country around the globe and costing us a significant amount of money at home.  Minority government’s can work, and do in many democracies around the globe, but you need your politicians to be a little more mature.  It’s not a game, national politics affect every Canadian and we need to hold our politicians to account for acting as though party loyalty is more important than governing the country.

Who will be sitting in the PMO when the music stops this time?

So where are we at?  Despite the sudden rhetoric a browse by the Liberal and Conservative websites revels no major vision or strategic ideas that would allow us to make an informed decision about our future government.  The NDP website at least expresses their desire to work with the government, so hopefully over the next couple of weeks their party will be able to explain what policies they would need to see in order to support the government (unfortunately the Conservatives have pretty much already nixed the idea, before even knowing what they are opposing.)  The Bloc is a bit of a wild card but are at least clear in that ‘if it’s good for Quebec we will support it’, however they could more clearly articulate what the major priorities for Quebec are at this juncture.  And as per usual, the Green’s are the only party that has posted some vision for the country, so at least you know what you’re getting if you vote Green (not to mention Elizabeth May seems to have by far the most rational and sane response to all the saber rattling, think what you may of her politics, but we should all be giving kudos to Ms. May for trying to be the only adult in the room).

As an eternal optimist I can only assume that if there is an election this fall, before it is called all the major parties will have provided a clear vision for the Country, along with the primary strategic goals they will strive to achieve, maybe even putting a couple of milestones in that would allow both the government and people to track the success of their plans.  That would be dangerous because then there would be the potential for ‘failure’, but there would also be the potential that of one of our parties would actually deliver on their promises and we could reward them with a majority government the next go around.