Last Monday, I proudly cast my vote for the
NDP. I’ll talk about why their platform is important to me, and why I think Tom
Mulcair is the best candidate for Prime Minister, but let’s start by talking
about my local riding.
We’re really voting for a local candidate
in the election, despite all the advertising promoting the party leaders. My
NDP candidate in London North Centre is German
Gutierrez, a teacher at the Fanshawe College School of Language and Liberal
Studies. German has worked as a journalist, and served on the boards of the
local public library and Museum London, in addition to his work as a community
activist welcoming newcomers to Canada as part of the London & Middlesex
Local Immigration Partnership. The first time I met German,
he shook my hand and we spoke about job opportunities for young people. He’s an
intelligent, intense fellow, someone who cares about people in the community.
Just the kind of person I want to be working for me in Parliament – he will
work to make London and Canada better for everyone.
The incumbent Conservative in my riding has
hardly covered herself in glory. She’s a backbencher whose only significant
action during her time in office was voting incorrectly during a House vote.
She hadn’t been attentive enough, and simply stood when her neighbor did. My
one interaction with her was an angry letter I sent her about her party’s
legislation weakening health care spending. The response I received was pure
Conservative party boilerplate. My representative had clearly not added
anything to the text she’d been given by her bosses, except her name at the
bottom.
I take great pleasure in shredding the
pieces of Harper propaganda she mails me, using her Parliamentary mailing
privileges.
The Liberal candidate is a handsome young
lawyer with a semi-permanent five o’clock shadow circa Don Johnson 1985. He
seems to have spent a lot of money on big red signs.
That feels like the election in a nutshell,
to me. But let’s get back to the NDP platform.
I think one of the reasons people are so
cynical about politics is that hardly anyone seems to be voting for anything. It’s always negative; vote
for the lesser evil, the status quo, and for God’s sake don’t let THAT GUY win.
Not a single election in my lifetime has been about the prospect of building something, of changing Canada for the better. It’s no wonder that politics
never seems to get better for ordinary Canadians. We’re constantly spinning our
wheels, making the same choices over and over and hoping that it will turn out
differently this time.
We have, to be blunt, been conned. Conned
into thinking that we have no legitimate choices to make, conned into thinking
that our voices don’t really count, conned into thinking that one politician is
as bad as the next, conned into thinking that Canada means whatever the
establishment parties say it means.
The NDP platform is about positive change.
It is about building a better Canada, and not just about slapping a few
band-aids on things Stephen Harper has slashed during his tenure.
What is the great national project that
people speak of, when they talk about Canada? Undoubtedly our national health
care program, which is still a wonder and a boon to the lives of millions of
Canadians despite years of government neglect and cuts aimed at hobbling it. It
speaks to our real values as
Canadians: our compassion, our decency, our sense of the public good. This is a
program that was designed to make sure that in Canada, no one would be turned
away from medical care at a doctor or a hospital no matter how poor they were.
I am exceedingly proud of our health care system, even if the wait times are
sometimes long. We had many worries when my grandfather had a heart attack, but
one of them was not that his illness would bankrupt the entire family.
The NDP has two programs in their platform that continue in this tradition.
They would make the lives of Canadians from all walks of life better in
substantial ways, just like our health care system did during the day of Tommy
Douglas.
The first is a national pharmacare program. This is a natural extension of our
health care program, something that would be a tremendous godsend to our aging
population. The idea is simple: in the same way that making health care a
single-payer system makes the costs cheaper for all, we make purchasing medical
drugs a single-payer system too. We pay into the program through our tax
dollars, and the government purchases necessary medical drugs for every
citizen. This would significantly reduce the price of drugs for every Canadian,
and improve the quality of life for all.
The second is a national childcare program. This is something that several Liberal
governments have promised, but never delivered on. A national childcare program
would subsidize the costs of childcare across the country, capping the price at
$15 a day. In Toronto, child care costs can be as high as $3,000 a month,
believe it or not (it was reported in the Toronto Star in 2014), and it doesn’t
take a genius to see that if you’re paying 36K a year for child care as a
single parent, it is very hard to get ahead or even tread water, let alone save
money for a university education. (The average across Ontario is $1152, very
close to what the average family pays for housing costs.) This program would
lift families across the country out of poverty, and make it possible for many
women to re-enter the workforce. Every dollar invested in childcare grows the
economy $2.
These are great national projects, the
culmination of the hopes of generations of Canadians. They offer a substantial
change for Canada, not just hollow rhetoric, something we can build together to
renew our country and make it great again. They are not band-aid solutions of
blanket spending that have no specific goals, as promised by the Liberals, or a
tepid cup of the same-old-cuts from Mr. Harper.
These projects would not be accomplished
overnight, it’s true. Neither was national health care. But nothing of
substance can be created quickly. Some things are worth waiting for, working
toward, investing in, fighting for.
The NDP and Mr. Mulcair stood up against
the government’s odious Bill C-51, which the Liberals voted for and have no
plans to repeal. They stood on principle against the Conservatives’ racist
anti-niqab rhetoric during the election, even when doing so started to cost
them votes in Quebec. A politician that can’t be counted on to stand for their
principles when it’s politically expedient to remain silent isn’t worth your
vote.
The NDP will restore funding to our
national health care program, as well as many other programs that have been
neglected or outright gutted by the Harper Conservatives. They will provide
sane and necessary environmental protections, and work toward greater
environmental stewardship to fight climate change. They will make sure veterans
get the medical care they need, and stop Canadian soldiers from being sent to
fight in unnecessary wars. They will stand up for the rights of First Nations
peoples, open an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women that the
Conservatives refuse to, and help deliver clean water and decent housing on
reserves across the country. They will stand up for women, and have more women
candidates than either the Liberals or the Conservatives. They will defend the
rights of workers and minorities, and stand for social justice for all.
They will restore funding to the CBC and
the arts in Canada, something that seems a distant dream after years of Harper
neglect. Did we ever fund those
things, we wonder. We did. At one point, we valued the arts in Canada, we
valued diversity and culture, and we couldn’t imagine a day that the
environment, our health care, or the rights of our people could be so casually
thrown aside. The Harper era will always be remembered as the time politicians
stopped even pretending to care about things like the public good or common
decency.
Don’t be fooled by Liberal rhetoric that
would have you believe they’re somehow to the left of the NDP in this election
because they’ve promised to open up the purse strings while the NDP have
promised to balance budgets. This doesn’t make the Liberals progressive, it
just makes them masters of pork barrel politics, handing out public funds to
purchase votes in exactly the same way that Harper channeled funds to
Conservative ridings. Which of their plans will actually change Canada for the
better? Will they change anything at all?
A national pharmacare program. A national
child care program. These are programs with vision, things that are built to
last. A legacy for our children, and generations of Canadians beyond them. They
will change what Canada means to
people. They will change it for the better. No other party is proposing
anything like them. No other party will allow a substantial conversation about
building anything like them.
This is the kind of positive change that an
NDP government will bring to Canada. A government that isn’t just about
replacing the least ethical, least accountable, least fiscally responsible
government in Canadian history with one that is a lesser evil. A government
that stands for principles and real Canadian values, a government that is about
building a better Canada.
Don’t believe the con. Your vote counts.
You can choose to elect a government that wants to make Canada better, not just
the same old cynical status quo. You can choose to build something greater,
something that you can be proud of again. You can look back on this election with
pride, because your vote counted for
something, not just against
something.
That is why I proudly voted for the NDP.
I hope you will too.
