Back Into The Election Fray

After a few days of relative peace and quiet, the election has restarted.

While attempting to assert the moral high ground in the campaign, the CPC has stooped to exactly the kind of ad-hominem campaigning that they are accusing the Liberals of. Sigh. I'm starting to find Harper's nasal voice truly irritating - especially when he keeps on repeating his mantra about voting conservative for change.

Jack Layton's speech was actually pretty good - sadly it hasn't been getting any airplay. Instead, the sound bytes are focusing on his comments about Klander's blog. *sigh*

Martin played the day low key, as did Duceppe (or at least as far as I'm concerned) - why the Liberals are holding back is beyond - we'll just have to see. I hope that Martin's Liberals decide to talk ideas instead of slagging the CPC (the inconsistencies in the CPC's platform are their own worst enemy, as far as I can tell)

The highlight of the day was the official Green Party platform document was released. I've only read about half of it - while I don't agree with all of what they are presenting, it's definitely a major switch from the other parties, and relatively mainstream. While Harper prattles on incessantly about change, he has yet to convince me that he has any real ideas about changing government.

My initial impressions of the Green Party platform:

On the environment - a tad over the top (but not unexpected). I'm skeptical about amending the charter of rights in the manner they describe, but it would be quite feasible to introduce a Bill of Environmental Rights to express much of what they are proposing. (Oddly, some of that could serve quite nicely as a legislative "stopper" against US demands under NAFTA for access to Canada's water supply and other resources.)

The Energy platform will cause Ralph Klein and company to have kittens. However, I do think it's forward looking in the right directions. It is weak in dealing with short term energy crisis issues though. (for example, I think it is quite likely that we will need to invest in nuclear power generation to bridge the gap while some of the other alternative energy research makes its way into the realm of commercially viable on the large scale.

Like their energy platform, the Green Party's economic policies are intriguingly long range in their view. I suspect it would take at least a decade for the policies they would enact to be felt by most Canadians. Again, the environmental angle is uniquely positive.

The health care platform sounds distinctly like it has been snarfed from the NDP.

They have some significant proposals for electoral reform which could be very interesting if they could ever implement them.

Sadly, I doubt the Green Party will pull off much this time around. For a party that is actually forward looking - and views government as having a positive role to play in the growth of the nation - they have a lot of interesting ideas. If the Liberals are going to reinvent themselves again, the Green Party's playbook would be much more interesting to the electorate than ripping off things from the CPC or the NDP.