A Commentary by Doug Draper
“Canadians enjoy a great privilege that many of them take for granted and don’t realize how appreciated it should be. That privilege is democracy.”
– Karim Ahmed, a new generation Canadian and native of Egypt, now residing with his family in St. Catharines.
You could almost hear a collective sighs of “oh no” a” from many Canadians a week ago this Friday when word circulated that the federal government was brought down in a non-confidence vote, triggering another election.
Neda Agha-Sultan, a 27-year-old Iranian woman, was shot through the heart two years ago, ralling for the chance Canadians have to vote in a fair and open election.
That’s the reaction this columnist has received over the past week from many in this region. “What a waste of time and money,” one person told me. “I’m so fed up, I’m probably not even going to vote,” said another.
This March 26, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with Government General David Johnston to officially dissolve parliament for what will be a May 2 vote, CBC TV played a news piece noting that “people (across the country) are feeling a little less than inspired about another campaign.” A political science student at Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova told a CBC reporter that “no one” in his classes were talking about the election “because it doesn’t seem to matter.” Another young woman told the reporter she is “not really excited at all (about the election) because I don’t really follow politics all that much.”
Perhaps these reactions should not be all that surprising since Election Canada statistics show there has been a continuing decline in voter turnout in the country for reasons that may have something to do with a growing level of cynicism about politics in general, along with a growing disappointment in our political leaders for too often promising one thing and doing another. All to a point that compared to somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent of eligible Canadian voters going to the polls 50 or so years ago, only 58 per cent turned out to vote in the 2008 federal election, and only about one out of every three young people 24 year old or younger bothered to vote in that last federal campaign, even though it is their future that is most at stake.
I’ve made the argument in years gone by that if we don’t like what we see in our political leaders, they are the politicians we deserve if we don’t get engaged in elections and the issues that face us as communities and as a country. I’ve also made the point when it comes to low turnouts for federal and provincial elections, and municipal elections like the one we had last fall where, in most municipalities across this region and others, less than 40 per cent of us bothered to vote, that those who fought and died for our freedoms in the two world wars during the last century, deserve more respect from us than that. Never mind observing the moment of silence once a year on Remembrance Day. If you are not going to express what they sacrificed their lives for in a more meaningful way by getting engaged in the issues at stake in our country and communities, then pinning a poppy on your lapel for a few days each November is a pretty empty gesture.
These days, I can’t also help but wonder what those of us who believe another federal election – even if it is the fourth one in seven years – is a waste of time and money might say to millions of people in North Africa, in countries like Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, who are fighting and, in some cases, literally dying to have the opportunity to vote in even one election in their country.
At the top of this column, I quoted a few short lines shared with me by Karim Ahmed, who I met one very cold night this past February on the steps of St. Catharines city hall during a local gathering of support for the people of Egypt, who were protesting and in some cases paying with their lives for the chance to rid themselves of a decades-long dictatorship and vote in even one real (rather than bogus or rigged) election.
In that quotation, Ahmed twice used the word “privilege” rather than “right” to describe what is very much a privilege we Canadians have to get engaged in the political process and vote in elections. Privilege is a wise way of putting it since, when if you think about it, we really have no rightsin the sense that rights (as others in the world have unfortunately found out) can be taken away by rogue leaders at a moment’s notice.
So my fellow Canadians, let’s not groan about the privilege we have. Let’s get engaged and use this vote to elect the best representatives we can to guide this great country into the future.
Click on the following link for a video on Neda Sultan and the fight for democratic rights still raging in the Middle East. www.youtube.com/watch?v=76W-0GVjNEc&skipcontrinter=1
(Share your comments below and visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
Yes we have the right and privilege to vote but complacency come into play when there are no candidates out there worth voting for !!
Our system is so screwed up that the only time you have a voice is on election day and after that it doesn’t matter what they told you during the campaign.
The puppets we send to the parliaments sit in their seats and do what there told by the leaders. This is not representing their constituents or fulfilling any campaign promises. We have no choice but wait until the next election and by that time most of the voters have forgotten the majority of the failed promises. This is not a real democracy and until the whole system changes the poor voter turnout will not improve as voting today is just not bearing the fruit it should.
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I couldn’t agree with you more. I am glad we are having an election and I hope we have the intelligence to change the government. One thing I have noticed when speaking to young people who are disillusioned and say they are not going to be bothered to vote: the mainstream parties have to come into the 21st century. In Germany they have an AR party which actually holds seats in their parliament. I wonder if young people would return to voting if they had a party to vote for that was really different. I am having a hard tiime voting for anyone who thinks eating seal meat is OK. But I have a harder time voting for someone who doesn’t seem to really believe in democracy.
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A: Because of their (sustained) Loyalist heritage forbidding nonconformity and “the people ruling,” extreme geographic isolation, and, a media-promoted/White supremacist infatuation with U.S. right-wing values, politics, and personalities – THAT’S WHY. No Obama/Clinton for Canada – ever; the Russian Commissar, a fake democracy *salesman* -oops, I mean, “public intellectual”- (and Harvard fifth column representative) will be taking over as Canada’s new and improved patriarchal autocrat, the legislature -“democracy”-……prorogue-able at will.
“We wouldn’t have international human rights without the leadership of the United States.” – Michael Ignatieff in support of George Bush’s war against ‘terror’
“Ignatieff attempts to distinguish his approach from Neo-conservativism because the motives of the foreign engagement he advocates are essentially altruistic rather than self-serving.”
Michael Ignatieff voted in support of non-binding motions in the House of Commons calling on the government to “allow conscientious objectors…to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations…(including Iraq war resisters)…to…remain in Canada. However on September 29, 2010, when those motions were proposed as a binding private member’s bill from Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy, CTV News reported that Ignatieff “walked out during the vote.”
Ignatieff has argued that Western democracies may have to resort to “lesser evils” like indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, assassinations, and pre-emptive wars in order to combat the greater evil of terrorism.
“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.” – Noam Chomsky
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Well put, Doug. Our democracy may be flawed but it’s better than the alternative. Change can only come through participation.
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Well it seems you do read this online paper and sir that is definitely a plus in your favor. I also note that you do write to local papers but I did not know, as you say, that you do not subscribe to any political party? First of all I confess that I know diddle squat about Michael Ignatieff or his past or present politics
BUT I CERTAINLY DO KNOW WHAT STEPHEN HARPER has, during his horrific tenure in Ottawa, done to Canada and the Canadian peoples.
Years ago while in Europe I learned first hand how much Canada was ONCE respected through out the world, a respect generated by our willingness to be “PEACE KEEPERS” not war mongers as Harper has turned us into.
a respect generated by our compassion for others less fortunate then us and a respect and also admiration for being an advocate for dialogue.
YES MOST DEFINITELY I wanted an election hoping that Canadians had had enough of the dictatorial antics of a government bent on turning this country into a replica of one that has had too many wars, Harper wants his own Canada one aircraft painted red emblematic of his role as EMPEROR of Canada .
I, like many other Canadians have had enough of Harper and his Goons and if it takes an election, or two, or three bring them on just as long as this asshole and his Ontario thugs are gone (to Hell)
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I am with Joseph Somers on this, Anyone here read ‘The Armageddon Factor’, by M. MacDonald (I think?) Give it a go before you vote.
I have lived and worked in the U.S. and in Canada, as well as in Britain, and, guess what? I am still a Canadian, and return here always, live and vote here. I suspect few of you can say the same. So that makes me a smarty-pants, OK. But I actually have seen Canada as ‘others’/foreigners view it, a remarkable way to see one’s homeland, believe me. It isn’t as those cocooned here think of it, as a nation.
Harper is truly an agenda-driven idealogue, and one scary one. Take a breath, folks, count to ten or twenty-five, and think again. Then vote.
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Dear Gail, I too lived in Britain,USA and now Canada, I lived on the same Street as a future Prime Minister Sir Harold Wilson he taught school and rode a bicycle, I was his newspaper boy so I knew he read magazines that nobody else read, Time magazine nobody on my route got that US magazine, he was to become the local MP Labour Party, close to the NPD. I always had a voracious appetite for world news I loved to read.I don’t understand why Canadians loath voting , they bitch a lot but when they have an opportunity to throw the rascals out they stay home, crazy.
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sorry NDP New Democrats
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Gail,
I haven’t read the book YET, but I have it on hold from the library. Thanks for the suggestion!
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