The political stallions are off and running…
With Canadians inoculated, the national election campaign is on. And leaders of the respective federal political parties are crisscrossing the country, trying to convince the populace that their party’s political goods, otherwise known as promises, are the best remedy for their individual and collective ailments.
So a little over a month from now we will know which leader was most effective in communicating the party’s message to the people, and thus the right to take the country forward into the next decade.
Based on the ongoing election conversation, money matters and the environment (compounded by irrefutable evidence of climate change) are the major issues on the minds of many to most Canadians, and will continue to be so this election cycle. And the national leaders are talking about them, all except the leader of the newly minted People’s Party Of Canada (PPC), Maxime. He was a member of the federal Conservative Party during the Stephen Harper years as leader and two-term Prime Minister.
But with the Conservative defeat in the 2015 federal election, and a period of political soul-searching with what had become a party beaten into opposition status, and looking to renew itself, a new era and political regime with the son of former Prime Minister P. E. Trudeau, Justin, at the helm, who was vested with the political authority (a majority government) to take Canada forward.
So with what seems to be a rejuvenated Conservative Party under the leadership of (little known) Andrew Scheer, enter Maxime Bernier, leader of his own PPC, still a Conservative with an agenda, albeit from my standpoint a dubious one.
And there’s Jagmeet Singh, a somewhat soft-spoken man, now at the helm of the NDP, a party I have voted for on occasion, because the party for me has been always human centered (or centric).
On the CTV news on Tuesday night one of the stories centered on racism/ethnocentrism in the current campaign. Asked about the political leaders a middle-aged white male wearing a cap out in rural Manitoba said, in reference to Mr. Singh, that… he should take that “thing off his head…” He was simply voicing his thoughts… and what many other people of his ‘persuasion’ might be thinking but repressing… at least in public.
Which brings me back to PPC leader Maxime Bernier who’s selling a bag of political goods (many) Canadians have never heard voiced so freely in election campaigns.
See, he was perhaps constrained by party rules (protocol?) when he was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party and couldn’t voice his true feelings about the changing face (human landscape) of 21st century Canada. And his election plan as leader of the PPC is to do something about it – what he calls “Mass Immigration” – if he’s elected Prime Minister.
That perennial issue, immigration, now well rooted in many parts of Europe given the rise of populism and now seeded and taking root in North America.
That won’t happen in Canada if the PPC leader has his political way…
