And so it begins…

Well, I just got home from a weeks vacation at the cottage which, while not completely cut off from the news of the world, does make it very easy to ignore it all.  We left the cottage twice, for groceries, and spent the remainder of the week sitting by the lake and practicing guitar.

It was a much needed rest period before facing the next 5 weeks of election campaigning, which was confirmed this morning with Stephen Harper deciding “to manipulate the electoral system for partisan political advantage”, ignore the spirit, if not the letter of his own law, and call an election for October 14.  If I hadn’t watched the news this morning before packing the car to leave, the few early election signs which are already dotting the landscape on my route home told me the story.

There is a great deal riding on this campaign for a lot of people.

Nationally, three out of four leaders of Canada’s national parties plus Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc all must meet a certain minimum performance level in this election in order to keep their jobs, Elizabeth May being the lone exception.  Or so say the main stream media, in any case.  Stephen Harper must at least maintain a minority government, else the Conservatives look elsewhere for leadership.  Stephane Dion must gain ground, either weakening the Harper minority or achieving a minority for the Liberals.  Jack Layton cannot afford to have the NDP lose seats in any meaningful numbers, or the party may begin looking for his successor.  Gilles Duceppe must grow his party’s influence or risk being replaced.

Locally, in our own riding of Newmarket-Aurora, Lois Brown lost in the last election against Belinda Stronach after previously losing the nomination contest back when Belinda was a Conservative, and she may not wish to keep fighting for the seat should she lose it this time round.  Tim Jones already lost in his bid to be re-elected as Mayor of Aurora, and may choose not to run again if he does not win this race.  That said, he has been a career politician for many years now, so who knows.   I have no information about either of them, this is just me speculating.  To my knowledge we do not yet have a nominated NDP candidate, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

But without doubt, in my mind, the greatest impact of this election will be on Canadian voters, both in the near term as well as future generations.

Yes, there are many short term concerns that Canadians may be fooled into thinking are the priority issues upon which they should base their vote.  But in the end, it is the longer term issues which count the most.

Climate change has reached a crisis point.  Not in terms of impact as yet, but certainly in terms of the time frame in which to avoid the worst impacts.  None the less, our main stream, traditional political parties will do the usual dance of avoiding the issue until they can avoid it no longer, do as little as possible, until they are forced at some point to deal.

Peak Oil (ie the date of maximum world production) is most likely behind us, and yet we still have no plan or even discussion from the main stream parties who are supposed to be these alleged “strong leaders.”

And we still have over 1 million children living in poverty conditions in this, one of the richest countries in the world, 19 years after all parties in parliament voted unanimously voted to end this disgrace.  In a word, pathetic.

Stephane Dion and Stephen Harper are right about one thing.  This election is about asking yourself, “what kind of Canada do you want?”

We are at a fork in the road.

Do you want to take the left path?  Do you want to take the right path?  Or do you question, “why are we continuing to decide between to two roads that both lead over that cliff?”