It was with a little surprise (and a lot of disappointment, frankly) that I surfed over to read Garth Turner’s blog to hear the news that he is joining the Liberal caucus. I even watched the video where he gives some of his reasoning for his decision. Gotta love that MPTv.
Well, the decision is his to make, after all, and he will find out soon enough how the constituents of Halton feel about it. I’ll not speculate about his re-election chances whether as a Liberal, Conservative, Green or Independent. For the record, I agree with his position on not resigning at this point, and his reasoning for it. His case is vastly different than that of Scott Brison, Belinda Stronach or Wajid Khan. And not even close to that of David Emerson.
It would have been nice, not to mention a great service to Canadian voters as Garth says he is all about, for him to have joined the Green Party, giving us our first MP and taking away that last ridiculous excuse for not including Elizabeth May in the televised leaders debates, but I believe that she will be there anyway for reasons that I have stated many times before.
I’ll continue to read Garth’s blog, and I dearly hope it is not degraded in quality or content now that he has joined another party. I believe that Garth has opened Pandora’s box in terms of communicating with voters, in his riding and others. He has raised the bar, set a new standard by which the level of communication between MP’s and voters should be judged.
So on that note, here’s my committment to the voters of Newmarket-Aurora. And you can hold me to it.
Should the time come to pass that I am elected to office, I will make my best attempt to communicate with voters to the standard that Garth Turner has set over this past year. In the meantime, I’ll be continuing this blog in my spare time as I do now, given the time restraints of having a non-political full time job.
Actually hearing from your MP. Would that be a refreshing change for our community?
