Thanksgiving is over, fall is definitely here on Vancouver Island with colourful shrubs and trees, and the temps are falling like the more frequent rains.  In short, winter is around the corner.

More pressing is the action of our national broadcasting corporation – the CBC – when it comes to the current election for our federal parliament.

For some reason, the CBC has been promoting what the pollical parties are constantly selling. Party politics here in Canada is alive, well and ruining democracy at an ever-increasing rate. In spite of their incessant ads to promote their ability to be an impartial informer of events of interest to Canadians, CBC’s entire reporting on this election has been about the party leaders and which one we want which one we should avoid and so on ad nauseum.

Somehow in all of this the basic reason for voting has disappeared.  Elect a member of parliament to represent the needs of we, their constituents, to Ottawa. How simple is that and how stupidly ignorant of that have we become?   It has been changed now to elect a leader whose representative from the people will do just exactly what they are told, not by we the people but indirectly through the party caucus to do the will of the corporate lobbyists. This is modern politics, and it stinks.   It also costs us a lot of money to have 338 people in Ottawa pretending to do the nation’s business.

Do the candidates in the ridings across the country listen to us or are they too busy spouting their party line?  I only attended one town hall this time (my work schedule only allowed one) and though there was only the occasional referral to the party leaders – usually about economic matters – the flat, polite, closely timed remarks were scripted, canned responses handed down from the election war rooms.  There was no time for passion, no time for humour, no time for actual debate, no time for audience participation and questions, indeed I felt cheated of democratic conversation as I left the Hall.  That sums up the whole nonevent which has been directed by the CBC with no reality in democracy, but perfectly in line with the current regard to the truth of corpocracy.

How many times have I been asked in the last week which leader to vote for, and when I say that  I only vote for a leader because she happens to be in my riding I get a barrage of facts about why they hate so and so, can’t stand so and so, etc., and seem genuinely puzzled when I ask if their names are to be on the ballot they will use to vote.  As long as this misconception of democracy is promoted by such as the CBC ignorance will abound.

So my question is the same for the hypocritical CBC:  

Since the party leaders are not on 337 ballots, how can a vote for their puppet on a ballot rather than for a real representative be a democratic election?

Democracy means we the taxpaying people of Canada should have a say in what happens in our country, and yet you are encouraging us to vote for a dictatorship. Is this how you spend the money that we give you to undermine democracy?  The answer is a resounding yes.  

A vote for an independent or small party candidate may not elect the Prime Minister but it might elect someone to keep him/her accountable to the people. Remarkably even the Communist and Marxist Leninists parties want to re-introduce the use of the Bank of Canada, whilst the current crop wants to bury us in further international high-interest debt.  Now, who do you imagine is really for Canada and Canadians?

Shame on you CBC, and maybe you will get a party which will slash your subsidies again.

Jeremy