Oct 26 2008
The True Canadian Wilderness - Elections in the Great White North
There is nothing more frustrating than the seeing general apathy that many Canadians seem to hold towards politics. I understand that with the various municipal, provincial and federal elections, it seems like we are constantly under a barrage of campaigns from the left, right or centre. What I don’t understand is the number of people who just can’t be bothered to participate in the process.
In our recent election the Conservatives formed the government with a whopping 37.6 percent of the popular vote nationwide. Now, in a five party (and counting) system, this result is actually fairly impressive, but to me a closer look at these numbers reveals something much more concerning. With a modern day record low for voter turnout of 59.1 percent, it means that only 22 percent of eligible voters were responsible for placing Stephen Harper and his party in the government seats.
Conventional wisdom is that low voter turnout is a symptom of voters generally feeling that the status quo is fine with them. In a completely unscientific survey of my friends, it seems as though this isn’t necessarily the case. Time and time again when I came across someone who chose not to vote the reasons where strikingly similar. In many situations, when voters are in a “legacy” seat - one which has been held by a particular candidate or party seemingly forever - people just felt that their vote didn’t really affect the outcome, so why bother?
A more common and distrubing answer comes from those people who feel that regardless of who wins the seat, or even forms the government, it doesn’t really matter one way of the other. Canadian voters, particularly young voters, feel that regardless of who forms the government the ultimate result will be corruption, greed, scandals and broken promises.
When the governments defence of it’s actions consists of bringing up the mis-deeds of the “other guys” from their days in government or by downplaying actions that are in the best case scenario, morally grey, there are major trust issues between the representatives and the represented.
Government policy is complicated and the work being done by the men and women we have recently elected to voice our concerns is something that we need to pay more attention to and not just when an election is at hand. It’s true that, on it’s own, one voice rarely makes a difference, but every marathon starts with a single step.
