Opinion by Darren Clarke, August 29, 2021

So, we have an election. Nobody really wanted one but here we are. Maybe it was an inevitable end for a minority government, maybe it was the wayward ego of one leader, two leaders or all three? However we came to be here this decision will define the next four years in Canada. Of the three major political parties the Liberals and the NDP are working platforms suggesting they will support vulnerable Canadians and reinforce evolving Canadian values while, the third and richest party, the Conservatives, are clearly using a playbook employed by right wing parties across the globe to maximum effect. Parties like the Republican Party in the United States under Donald Trump. The playbook? Cultivate Anger, divide, conquer, pillage.

Case in point- Friday night the Liberal Party had to cancel a campaign event due to security concerns attached to a roving band of anti-vaxxers that have been threatening Trudeau and other Liberal candidates throughout the early stages of the election campaign. The harassment of the Trudeau campaign is part of a larger, coordinated, effort that has resulted in Justin Ling reporting in the National Post that threats against Liberal candidates and the Prime Minister were up 30%.

That anger, the bold and aggressive tactics associated with it, is all by design. The Conservative Party of Canada drew it up that way. I have no doubt the Liberal and NDP platforms have flaws and that their ability to execute the best parts of their intentions is worthy of skepticism, however neither poses a significant threat to the best parts of Canada, neither seeks to inflame the worst inclinations of our friends and family. Thing is, there are ample media outlets and writers who make a living aggressively criticizing the Liberals (and to a much lesser extent the NDP). The chorus of, mostly American hedge fund owned news outlets, raining down cynicism on Justin Trudeau, has crescendoed heading into September featuring the likes of, Diane Francis from the Financial Post, Rex Murphy, Conrad Black, John Ivison, (and more) at the National Post, Brian Lilley and everybody else at the Toronto Sun, and Robyn Urback at the Globe and Mail. This conventional media, 24/7 attack, on Justin Trudeau is of course accompanied by the seemingly Alex Jones themed vitriol of The Rebel and especially, frequent Conservative staffer Jeff Ballingall’s empire of social media slander- Canada Proud, Ontario Proud, The Post Millennial. The Ballingall outlets, historically funded by traditional Conservative donors, pedal Trump-style fear mongering, weaponized bias and misinformation, designed to activate rage. And rage they get.

Meanwhile the the Conservative party noticeably has no significant counterpoint in terms of meaningful, objective, critiques or social media hyperbole. They have been provided an almost complete pass by Canadian media.

Given how much the Conservative party, in theory and in action, undermines most Canadian’s basic sense of decency this lack of objective media critically exploring the Conservative approach to seeking and attaining power is dangerous. The average Canadian is going to struggle to not have their perspective skewed by the onslaught of negativity directed at the Liberals versus the abject lack of attention directed at the Conservatives. So let’s look at the Conservative party in Canada.

The Federal Conservative’s slogan is, “Take Canada Back.” The latest instalment in the global, right-wing-gone-wild, nationalist theme that gave us the likes of, “Make American Great Again,” “For Us Hungary First,” and “Brazil Before Everything! God Above All!” You can really only see the slogan, “Taking _________ Back!” so many times, in so many different countries, before you realize it isn’t so much about the country in particular as it is galvanizing a voting base via fear, intolerance and racism in order to attain power.

Similar to far right governments around the world Canada’s Conservatives, oppose popular, defining, Canadian entities like single-tier, universal health care, real protections for the environment, improvements in the living wage and working conditions, as well as consumer protections. Conservatives also continue to threaten Canada’s admirable social endeavours like supporting the LGBTQ community, providing a safe haven as well as opportunities for refugees/immigrants and ensuring a woman has full domain over her body. 

They are called Conservatives despite radical perspectives like climate change denial, yet, right now, they are poised to follow up numerous provincial victories with one at the Federal Level. How could something so detrimental to most Canadian’s vision of what makes Canada Canada keep happening? How could basic Canadian conceits like kindness, honesty and decency be on the chopping block?

It’s a lot of things.

It’s the massive advantage the Conservatives have in fundraising. It’s American hedge funds increasingly owning Canadian print media and supporting the Conservative cause. It’s British analytics companies shaping right wing campaigns. It’s the Conservatives own, attack dog style, social media platforms (i.e. Ontario Proud, Canada Proud, The Post Millennial) planting seeds for imaginary conspiracies, imaginary victims, along with a real sense of entitlement in a certain demographic. These weaponized misinformation and manipulation sources actively cultivate an increasingly angry and rigid, base that will only serve one master. A demographic who enviously watched the social, political, often physical, carnage occur in the United States with the Republican’s recent attempt to reignite their Civil War via Making America Great Again.

So yeah, there’s a lot happening in this threat to subvert Canada with Americanized political and social sensibilities. A lot that, given the Conservatives disturbing level of control of the press and their disproportionately large campaign budget, you probably aren’t being told. Let’s try and break it down then by exploring- Who the Conservatives are and what they represent. The undue influence of Conservative media via various platforms. What the consequences of Conservative Governments has been- who has benefited, who has been hurt. What the Conservative Big Lie is. What will happen to our Universal Health Care.

Who are the Conservatives and Who Do They Represent?

In simplest terms the Conservative parties at all levels function to enable the needs of the types of corporations and developers who fund the party (The Conservative Party consistently receives vastly more fundraising contributions than the Liberals and NDP). These companies are in many cases deeply invested in the worst of Canada’s economic status quo (i.e. the Tar Sands, called the, “World’s Most Destructive Oil Operation,” by National Geographic) and are designed to voraciously seek more profit. The main barriers to profit are- environmental regulations, reasonable taxation and protections for you and your family from predatory businesses like the privatized Health Care sector that has long had its’ eye on the Canadian market.

The bottom line is, humanity is the main impediment to the Conservatives core principle- profit. Profit before people. So the significant contributions so many companies make to the Conservative Party are an investment sometimes paid off via the same kind of bailouts the party opposes when extended to average Canadians but has no problem being generous with when it comes to oil companies. Bailouts, taxpayer funded cleanups of abandoned wells, the environmental disaster that is the oil sands- this only maks sense to the Conservative party. Helping the average Canadian through an unprecedented pandemic? That, that they struggle to understand the reasoning for.

More evidence of who the Conservatives work for is provided via their actions in Conservative run provinces like Ontario and Alberta along with their Federal platform. Their priorities are always simple, 1) Removing or diminishing environmental regulations, 2) Cutting back social services and/or privatizing them (i.e. Health Care) to open up profit making opportunities for the people that fund their party, 3) Capping minimum wage (or in the case of Ontario cancelling further planned increases) and other worker benefits/protections like paid sick days, 4) Pandering to the worse inclinations they of their base (anti-immigration, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ community) to solidify their route to power. 

How the Conservative approach manifests in the real world has been easy to see during the pandemic-

• Alberta relaxing environmental rules for oil companies, Ontario removing protections for endangered species (to allow for more development), diminishing environmental checks on development and proposing a new highway that would cut through important wet lands and green space
• After the Conservatives were elected in Ontario they immediately scrapped the cap-and-trade mechanism in place to comply with the Canada’s efforts to lower carbon emissions. The cost of scrapping that program was estimated at a 3-billion dollar loss of revenue for the province. The Ford government also immediately cancelled the province’s Green Energy Deal for renewable energy resources costing taxpayers 231-million dollars.
• Ontario’s privatized Long Term Care (LTC) homes being hit with significantly higher rates of infection and death compared to public LTC’s. It’s also important to note that the Ford government has been steadfast in supporting the future of privatized health care despite this glaring example of how privatization of these types of services is clearly not in the best interests of the people of Ontario, that it’s too often dangerous and deadly even.
• Despite glaring failures with privatized welfare systems in England and Australia, Ontario has gone ahead with a trial run of privatized welfare, outsourced to an American company. The impact here is expected to be more uncertainty for the vulnerable. Taxpayers who support the services and apparatuses attached to welfare will now additionaly be paying for an American company to profit off of it.
• Suppression of the minimum wage while costs rise in lieu of wildly out of control real estate and rent prices. These increases in housing costs have often been fuelled by provincial mandates that have failed to leverage the development boon into greater access for Canadians to low-income housing and affordable rent.

This is but a snippet of the Conservative party in action over the past few years. To really bring home the heart and soul of the modern Conservative party there was a defining moment February 11, 2021. The moment took place at press conference adressing where Ontario stood in relation to Covid as the province prepared to begin to open back up. The exchange was captured by Chatelaine’s Fatima Syed–

“Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, and Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer, unveiled modelling data that indicated the province was heading to a third wave, spurred by new variants, and that cases would rise dramatically unless stay-at home orders continued.

“Am I missing something here—or is this presentation actually predicting a disaster?” TVO’s John Michael McGrath asked Dr. Brown.

Brown took off his mask and seemed to take a quick deep breath before saying “No, I don’t think you’re missing anything.”

Five days later, on February 16, the Ontario government lifted the stay-at-home order in 27 out of 34 regions.”

Despite having the disastrous nature of their decision to significantly open up as the third wave was building clearly laid out for them- Doug Ford’s Conservatives chose disaster. Less than sixty days later the province of Ontario declared its’ third state of emergency.

From a big picture standpoint the Ford Government’s choices here don’t make sense. The flawed decision making can only be understood when you look at the Conservative’s history of surrendering the fate of Canadians to the short sighted whims of the corporations and developers who fund them.

How do the Conservative Manufacture Support?

If we are to understand the success of the Conservative Party despite the damage they’ve done to the quality of life of the average Canadian we have to begin with the favourable media setup they have created. Conservatives have a wild advantage in terms of media coverage by traditional print media sources and most decisively in the social media sources they cultivate. 

Newspapers in Canada, print and online, are largely owned by American hedge funds at this point. Those news sources (like the Postmedia group) have pointedly worked to disseminate alt-right misinformation to pervert and drown out thoughtful political discourse in Canada. The National Post is a perfect example of the fall of Canadian media.

The National Post regularly trots out tired, compromised, souls, like Rex Murphy and Conrad Black to preach the Conservative Bible while whipping up derision towards Justin Trudeau. The problem once again posing as the solution via the very Viva la Free Market! talking points that are demonstrably accelerating wealth inequality around the globe.

In a moment we will talk about the relatively new phenomenon of influential, partisan, online sites masquerading as media sources. First though, we need to talk about how poison pills of political discourse are finding gigs in more traditional media sources owned by American hedge funds. In particular Postmedia’s Toronto Sun.

There is no pretend-media, alt-right, presence as inflammatory or dishonest as The Rebel. Yet Rebel co-founder, Brian Lilley, now writes for The Toronto Sun as an indirect cheerleader for the Conservative party, and an unabashed opponent of all things Justin Trudeau. Lilley, who lives with Doug Ford’s press secretary (and has not been transparent with readership about his conflict of interest) has spent the majority of the pandemic peddling soon-to-be-proven-wrong attempts to undermine the seriousness of the pandemic alongside Anthony Furrey who had sharpened his pen with alt-right screeching post, True North, prior to hooking up with the Sun. 

But the heaviest hitter in the Conservatives arsenal of weaponized misinformation has regularly resided in the party ranks under both Stephen Harper and Erin O’Toole. If we are going to understand what the Conservative party is right now and how they are finding the margins to win elections we really have to focus on the man who lead the digital support team for Erin O’Toole’s Conservative leadership bid in 2020– Jeff Ballingall. 

Ballingall had a significant impact on Doug Ford’s 2018 election win via his work with social media presence Ontario Proud. A 2018 Macleans article tidily summed up Ballingall’s recent resume at that time, “Before he founded Ontario Proud, Ballingall held several political jobs in the Harper government. He was a video specialist for the Conservative caucus and ran communications for Jim Prentice, who was then the minister of western economic diversification, until 2009. Subsequently, he spent a year as Toronto city councillor John Parker’s executive assistant and two years working for Sun Media.”

I wrote an article on Ontario Proud in 2019 entitled, “What is Ontario Proud? Who is Ontario Proud? (and why are they lying to your Mom?)” that is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the current state of the political climate on social media. In short, Ontario Proud is a Conservative party attack dog masquerading as a media source, whose post output from the month I tracked broke down to- 65% inflammatory, anti-Trudeau/Liberals, 23% clickbait (i.e. stories about sex cults, Spiderman blocking traffic), 12% pro-Canada, pro-Conservatives. (A quick look over Ontario Proud’s Facebook page right now indicates they’ve dropped the clickbait and completely focused on inflammatory bashing of Justin Trudeau with a few pro-Erin O’Toole posts mixed in)

In short, Ontario Proud, like Ballingall’s Canada Proud, like his Post Millennial, is a weaponized source of misinformation that uses meme’s and inflammatory articles to influence, to cultivate, the kind of anger and ignorance that prevents friends and family members from being able to reasonably discuss varying points of view. Comparing the Conservatives lead by Erin O’Toole to the Republican’s under Donald Trump may seem extreme until you consider that all the Conservatives are doing is contracting out the deplorable content that generated from Donald Trump. Erin O’Toole gets to undersell the attack while entities like Ontario/Canada Proud do the dirty work, filling Facebook and Twitter with articles by Canada’s abundance of Canadian media, meme’s suggesting Justin Trudeau doesn’t have a brain (classy) and pro-Erin O’Toole propoganda. It’s arms length deplorability.

This is not just the Canadian model of course. You see this playbook in the United States via the Republican Party and its’ propaganda/misinformation outlets like Fox News and OAN, as well right-wing and authoritarian governments across the globe- Russia, China, Brazil, Hungary and Britain. The playbook is simple- Create division and inflame hatred to suppress positive political discourse in the country thus allowing you to solidify a base to provide you the power to ransack the country. The traditional targets for these right-wing and authoritarian parties are the ones they most fear or think their base consider as threats to their unexplored world view- Academia, science, “otherness,” be it in the form of minorities, immigrants and refugees or the LGBTQ community, objective media. Truth tellers in particular they have a significant issue with.  

Sadly, Canada has a significant group of people all too willing to be complicit in the Conservatives con. Particularly when it comes to social issues. It’s a fragile, mostly male, mostly white, mostly aging group, whose desire to have their insecurities and ignorance pandered to allows them to sponge up seductive lies like the boogeyman of cancel culture (“They’re taking YOUR cartoons!“), immigrants (“They’re trying to change YOUR country!”), the LGBTQ community (“They’re trying to take YOUR masculinity!”) and a whole raft of crazy conspiracies like 5G towers, vaccines with microchips and an array of United Nations plots. The fear mongering taps into the racism and misogyny of a following with a rigid world view fiercely determined to not explore any of their immature emotional reactions to change and differing perspectives.

What does this all amount to? A Conservative party that is barely critiqued in conventional print media and is never portrayed negatively on the most popular political social media sites. The Conservatives get a massive positive push from these various media sites that are simultaneously aggressively portraying the Liberal and NDP in the most skeptical and negative light. These corrupt voices are then amplified by a growing, corrupt, base.

The leads to a lot of confused folks struggling to wade through misinformation in order to understand what their electoral choices will result in. This leads to people struggling to have rational conversations about things that matter without those conversations becoming emotionally charged. And if you are thinking you’ve seen this dynamic in play before- you have.Just to name a few you have- The Ontario provincial election, the Alberta election, the latest Republican bids for the Presidency in the States under Donald Trump as well as in Britain with Brexit . 

And again, it’s important to note here that Stack Data Strategy who worked with Boris Johnson on the disastrous Brexit campaign as well as Johnson’s re-election in the 2019 are working with Erin O’Toole currently on the Conservative election bid. The blueprint here of using misinformation and inflaming the worst in a base- that’s precisely what got England into the debacle that is Brexit.

This playbook is as always about the same goal- Access to power. Access to remove the barriers for unchecked greed. Undercutting meaningful oversight so as to enable the mindless absurdity that is the notion of infinite economic growth in a finite world. Which is why Erin O’Toole is so keen to defund the Canadian Broadcasting Commission (CBC).

The CBC has long been cut and underfunded to a point it is an increasingly toothless entity in terms of being a journalistic point of reference for political happenings and a touchstone for public discourse. Still, it remains a thorn in the Conservatives sides in being not fully corrupted by them and holding the possibility of being a check against their multi-faceted propaganda/misinformation machine. No idea is as flawed as that of Canada being unable to afford a public broadcaster that allows Canadians a potential uncorrupted source to inform the past, present and future. The fact the Conservatives are so aggressively advocating entirely dismantling/privatizing our communications channel tells you everything you need to know about their intentions. 

What Are the Consequences of Conservative Governments, Who Does It Benefit?

It begs the question- What is it that the Conservatives don’t want you to know? Simple, that the things they are selling as beneficial for the average Canadian aren’t. They’re good for the oil companies, privatized health care companies, as well as the various corporations and developers (domestic and trans-national) that support them. They aren’t good for you. 

Examples-

• Privatized healthcare will, as per the American model Conservatives love, lead only to less access, higher costs and likely more debt being attached to healthcare for the average person. Canada will continue to, as proven in the Long Term Care home examples, trade off deadly consequences for the many in the interests of enriching the few. 
• Further diminishing of protections for natural resources, the environment at large and life around us will lead to a lower quality of water to drink and air to breathe along with undercutting the future viability and self-reliance of Canada
• We will miss out on opportunities to ween ourselves off antiquated economic/energy models that might allow us to embrace more viable alternatives for the present and future. Canadian workers/taxpayers will continue to pay the high price of short sighted economic plans. Meanwhile, the tar sands will continue to be testify against any Canadian pretence of environmental responsibility.
• More and more the money made in our communities will not stay in our communities– For example, the Ontario government outsourcing administration of welfare programs to a for-profit American company. 
• In order to pander to their base the Conservatives will threaten a woman’s right to an abortion, marginalize and work against the LGBTQ community, be less accommodating of important human rights endeavours like compassionately embracing immigration and those seeking refuge in Canada
• Given the constant complaints from Conservatives about the Liberal government’s financial support of vulnerable Canadians during the pandemic, along with provincial Conservative governments unwillingness to support Canadians I have to assume a Conservative federal government would have let more vulnerable people be in more vulnerable spots in the same circumstances

How do the Conservatives Get Elected?

The thing is, a large portion of Canadians are aware of the issues discussed here. Conservatives may be winning elections but often it’s less about the sheer will of most of the Canadian people and more about an electoral system that provides 100% of the power to whichever of the three major parties gets the most seats. It does not in fact reflect the will of the people. Take the breakdown of Doug Ford’s election victory- 

• The Conservatives managed to acquire approximately votes from 17% of the population, 24.6% of registered voters and 40.6% of the people who managed to get themselves out to vote.
• Bottom line 60% of the people who voted in Ontario didn’t want a Conservative government, 75% of registered voters didn’t vote Conservative, 83% of the population did not elect this government. 

The tough thing for folks like me who would never vote for the Conservative party in its’ current manifestation is we don’t have just one option, we have two- the Liberals and the NDP. Both these parties are socially more advanced than the Conservatives, less predatory of the marginalized and vulnerable, less inflammatory and divisive in their political discourse. They do however have significant differences in economic theory if not practice. The Liberals economically are center-right on the political spectrum, the NDP left. The two parties have shown that in power they will make large compromises to the status quo with the Liberals going so far as to, for instance in Ontario, embrace privatization of even profit making entities like Hydro. The NDP meanwhile continues to struggle mightily to put their ideals into practice altogether and especially in an organized form. An example of the NDP’s challenges here would be the the provincial government in British Columbia accommodating deforestation. 

The larger point is the NDP and Liberals act to split the vote amongst folks largely in lockstep on social issues, and mildly in agreeance economically. This increases the likelihood of Conservative victory and once elected the Conservatives do not share the other parties reluctance to agressively inflict their ideology on the entirety of the population. 

The Conservatives, aligning with the global right-wing party model (seen most drastically in play under the Trump administration in the United States) go right to work, regardless of the costs to the taxpayer, in dismantling existing infrastructure, quashing alternate energy initiatives, removing environmental regulations and undercutting wage increases, benefits and protections for workers.

The Conservative Parties Big Lie

And here’s where we get to the biggest lie in the Conservative arsenal- That they increase your wealth. 

They don’t. 

Lowering your taxes, or capping them, in and of itself does not increase your wealth. A lot of other things come out of your wallet and if you have lower wages, higher rent/mortgage payments, higher potential medical expenses, less community infrastructure, your position is definitely getting more precarious and more likely than not, poorer. This is the ultimate, “I’ll trade you two fives for a twenty,” scam being played here and we haven’t even talked about the lowering of quality of life that happens, for you and especially future generations, when your environment is made increasingly hostile in terms of supporting life. It bears mentioning again here that the cultural wars that Conservative media mechanisms inflame have consequences in terms of not just how civil we are with each other, it also leads to increasingly dangerous events like Corey Hurren taking five, illegal, loaded, fire arms in a truck and trying to drive through the gates of the wooded estate where Prime Minister resides, to confront Justin Trudeau (Hurren received a six-year sentence for this).

We just witnessed the United States under Donald Trump, the dream setup for Canada’s Conservatives, be devastated by Covid. And America was lit up by Covid largely because the Republicans, who Sarah Kendzior aptly described as a, “transnational crime syndicate,” gutted the Center for Disease Control, and advocated prohibitively costly healthcare services with limited access for its’ citizens. Moreover the Republicans actively deepened the reality of marginalization for a substantial slice of folks in their country, put short sighted business interests ahead of the public’s health and ruthlessly elected to use misinformation to inflame public mistrust of masks and vaccines for political advantage. And the death toll tells the tale 

As of August 25, 2021 America tracked 648,132 deaths from Covid out of their population of 392.2 million. Canada, despite more uniform, more encompassing tracking of Covid deaths, had 25, 849 deaths out of a population of 37.6 million. In essence, the US has just over ten-times Canada’s population but over twenty-four times the death rate. 

All that has saved Canada from sharing the United States fate when it comes to the Covid death totals is that the Conservative vision for our country has not yet been fully realized. 

With the Conservatives leading in the election polls however they are on the cusp on the kind of power, federally and provincially, to allow for a full realization of their vision. As such, more than ever, Canada is threatened with a future increasingly modelled after the American style of predatory capitalism.

Privatizing Health Care

Consider that Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was asked about privatizing health care in an interview with public relations specialist Kate Harrison on July 15, 2020. Given the content of the question and the fact that Harrison is a PR specialist I thinks it’s safe to assume her question was scripted by O’Toole-

“Will you be prepared to allow provinces to experiment with real health care reform including the provision of private for-profit and non-profit healthcare options inside universal coverage.”

O’Toole leaned in and responded, “Yes.”

The Conservative leader then looked to provide further clarification in the form of bonkers double speak following, “Let me elaborate a bit more…” I have included the link to the full video here for anyone wanting to appreciate O’Toole’s full response which includes such spectacular buzzwords as, “Public/Private synergies,” and attempted magical incantations such as, “capital will come in to drive efficiencies.” Given that, again, O’Toole was asking his own question through a PR person I am comfortable that his response here- “Yes,” adequately captures the spirit of his perspective. 

This is the evolving Canadian Conservative model- Pushing boundaries with the end goal always being radical change applied aggressively when full power is attained. Prior to full power being gained though Conservatives work in posturing and incremental suggestions.

In the end, do you really think a party that couldn’t make a licence plate (Ontario), cancelled minimum wage hikes (Ontario), rolled back paid sick days (Ontario), suggested cut backs to nurses wages this summer (Alberta), removed environmental regulations at the outset of pandemic (Alberta), has looked to removed environmental protections for water and endangered species (Ontario)- Do you think this is a party that is going to remodel health care in the best interests of the average person?

What Can We Do?

Don’t vote Conservative. 

That’s the main thing. Do not vote for a party that will never represent your interests (if you happen to be an oil executive or a real estate speculator reading this, you, YOU, may want to vote for the Conservative party but if you’re not making 500k+, they’re not looking out for you).

Don’t vote for the Conservatives because they have actively looked to bring out the worst in Canadians. Because the.people that lead their party are often transparently awful human beings.

Who to vote for then? Well, from there I get less certain. I’ll leave that up to you as to whether you want to vote Liberal because you think they have the best chance of victory and representing things that are socially important while accepting their potential economic shortcomings in terms of compromise and acceptance of the status quo. Maybe you vote Liberal because deep down you know, despite his flaws and whether you like it or not, Justin Trudeau is a decent human being. You could vote NDP, again because like the Liberals, socially they embody the best of Canadian’s perspective. In the NDP’s case you may be looking at a longer shot to win, some organizational challenges and underwhelming performances at the provincial level. You could vote NDP because despite his lamentable choice to utilize Conservative style hyperbole at times you believe Jasmeet Singh is also a decent guy. You could also vote for Dave the guy down the street running as an Independent who plays Lynyrd Skynyrd songs poorly on his electric guitar in his garage on Sunday afternoons and accept you may be wasting your vote entirely. 

It’s hard to say and I’m really only here to give you a decent idea of the depths of the Conservative corruption and full investment in all the major problems that face Canadians. Because really, almost nobody else is telling this true story.

Maybe the answer is in joining one of the parties you are most aligned with and pushing issues that may make things better- Electoral reform, ranked voting, maybe like minded parties consolidating so as to not split the vote. 

There’s lots to think about, consider, weigh and discuss if we are talking about making governance and elections better, more representative, of who we are and aspire to be in Canada. 

What isn’t in doubt however is that by design the Conservative party does not look to represent the interests of the average person. The Conservative parties interests in Canadians extends no further than providing them with access to pilfer from the environment and life that makes up the country. 

Everything that matters about the idea of Canada is at stake right now. We need to know that.

(Pictures courtesy Wikipedia)