rwmtest

When most people talk about voting strategically they mean voting for someone who they don't consider to be the most qualified candidate in order to keep someone they dislike the most out of power. Being strategic to me would be to make voting decisions today that have a longer term goal in mind.  What most call "strategic voting" may superficially may feel like a consideration of the future, but I consider it to be short-term thinking.  Even if you only take the specific vote in front of you, you are voting for someone you consider to be a lesser candidate which means that the best case scenario for your strategy is a bad outcome. Lets look at what we have seen in recent decades to see what some of the failures caused by some of these strategies. After the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two seats in the 1993 general elections, those who consider themselves to be conservative in some aspect of their political beliefs tried to regroup.  In the 1997 election the ...

I've had people comment on my strong views against the Liberals for voting for Bill C-51. It was not a surprise that the Liberals supported Harper's alleged "Anti-terrorism" bill, given the Liberals had multiple times in the past proposed similarly flawed Lawful Access legislation.  The agencies that have been granted additional powers by C-51 are not new, and this only represents an update from what I consider to be mistakes of the past. The Liberal response to Bill C-51 only served as a reminder of things I have not liked about the Liberal party for a long time.  They fall prey to the "something must be done, this is something, so it must be done" type of politics. They don't want to be seen as soft on [bad behavior flavor of the month], so push forward policies such as lopsided "lawful access" where citizens outside of agencies get additional scrutiny, but not citizens within government agencies. They get caught by the "you are either ...

The justification for Lawful Access sounds like: There is some small percentage of people within Canada who might commit [bad behavior], so we must more closely monitor Canadians to find those outliers and stop [bad behavior]. The critique many of us have against most Lawful Access implementations sounds like: There is some small percentage of people within government agencies who might commit [bad behavior] with the help of additional powers granted to those agencies, so we must more closely monitor government agencies to find those outliers and stop [bad behavior]. The specific [bad behavior] doesn't really matter, and has changed over the years as the politics of the day changes. Some years it is generically "crime", sometimes "child pornography", sometimes "hate crimes", and these days the most widely abused is "terrorism". Fundamentally, I believe legislation that add more power for government agencies to monitor citizens that doesn'...

Last evening I wrote the following to David McGuinty, my MP in Ottawa South . I am disappointed at the decision you and other Liberals made on C-51.  While I have voted for you multiple times in the past, I am now put in a position of no longer being able to do so. While the Harper Conservatives promote the idea that the next election will be between them and the Liberals, the Liberals stand too close on the most important issues for that to hold any truth.   If we had electoral reform it wouldn't matter as much, but given we don't I will need to spend the next election campaigning to ensure those who don't want to split the vote must keep away from Liberals. It won't be anything against you personally. The "lawful access" aspects of C-51 are so bad I simply can't vote for anyone who voted for it. For anyone who does not know me, I should put this letter in context.  I am not a participant in armchair politics, where I sit there at home or with close frien...