Welcome back to campus everyone! (Ok, I know I’m two and a half weeks late, but it’s the thought that counts.) I hope you’re all having a great term so far and haven’t drowned in work yet.
Now that summer has arrived, I have actually had to come to terms with the fact that I am, indeed, the Editor-in-Chief of The Iron Warrior. Although I blame extreme sleep deprivation for actually agreeing to take this on, I really am excited for this coming term. It’s been an eventful couple weeks, what with getting the paper up and running… and getting messages from UW Media Relations about concerns related to an article about a new satellite campus in North Korea (see The Tin Soldier from Winter 2011 for details).
When I originally thought about a topic for this editorial, I was planning to comment on the recent election results. I anticipated making it about the minority government, how the political situation had played out with the possible coalition government, and the possibility of the defeat of the government before anything even started. The election on May 2nd rather dramatically changed those plans. I sat at an election-results-watching party that evening and watched my hopes for the government – and my plans for this editorial – die a painful death.
Over the winter term, several countries in the Middle East rose up to protest for their rights to choose their own government (see the article on page 6 for an update on the situation in the Middle East). Given these events, I hope that all of you who had the right to vote in this election exercised this right. I definitely have firm political opinions, but no matter whom you voted for, as long as you voted, I can’t complain. Or at least I can’t complain too much.
I have to say that I was very disappointed in the election results. After all the things that the Conservatives have done, the idea that Canadian voters would hand them a majority government really bothers me. Either the 39.62% percent of Canadians who voted for them were seriously misinformed, or they must have truly felt that issues such as cancelling the mandatory long form census, the misspending of G20 funding, not to mention contempt of parliament, were either insignificant or laudable.
Not to say that this election wasn’t a historic event. It saw a dramatic defeat of both the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois, and the first federal NDP Official Opposition in Canadian history.
To put the Bloc’s defeat in perspective, they have lost official party status in the House of Commons. In the previous parliament, they held 47 seats. Now they have been reduced to four, while the minimum number of seats for official party status is twelve. They are now considered Independent MPs, which means that they will be not granted any opposition days or any seats on parliamentary committees. This has dropped the Bloc from a party with the power to decide votes in the House (by either supporting the Conservatives or Liberals + NDP), to a party which isn’t even acknowledged as such. Although I do not support the separatist movement in any form, I am disappointed to see Gilles Duceppe’s departure. He has always impressed me as a leader of a political party. I may not agree with his politics, but I wish some of the other leaders would be as classy as him. Even in his concession speech, he wouldn’t let his supporters boo Jack Layton. This, to me, shows the type of attitude which is severely lacking in politics today.
The NDP were the beneficiaries of the Bloc’s collapse, sending a variety of new MPs to Ottawa. This includes one MP for a French speaking riding who doesn’t actually speak French and had never visited the riding she will be representing at the time she was elected. There were also several university students elected, including one nineteen year old. While I’m glad to see more youth in politics, I’m worried that these new MPs aren’t ready for the positions they signed up for. I wish the new MPs luck, but I do wish that the NDP had put some more thought into their choices when they nominated their candidates. I know that these candidates were never expected to win, but our electoral system makes voting for a candidate instead of a party a difficult choice, leading to voters electing less than ideal candidates. I hope that this situation causes parties to select even their unlikely candidates with care in the future.
The Liberals were another spectacular collapse. While they retain their official party status, they finished third for the first time in their entire party history. They have had their second party leader resign in three years. Ignatieff did impress me during the campaign, considering he was operating under the handicap of the smear campaign that the Conservatives have been running for the last couple years. However, it was evidentially not enough to gain the support of the Canadian people. Hopefully, with the Liberals out of the spotlight, as they are neither the Government or the Official Opposition, they’ll be able to spend time to rebuild their party and pick a new leader who can connect with the Canadian people.
Now on to the Conservatives. I suppose that I should congratulate Steven Harper on attaining his long-sought majority. Instead, I am going to hide under a giant rock for the next four to five years, and try not to think about fighter jets, mega prisons, tough on crime bills, scrapped long gun registries, scrapped party subsidies …
I’ll go hide under my rock now. See you in five years.
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