How I see it

Ruth Ellen Brosseau - The controversy

The media’s relentless pursuit in attacks against Mrs. Brosseau are rather disgusting.

For those of you who may not know, 22,403 eligible voters in the riding of Berthier-Maskinonge voted for Mrs. Brosseau defeating the incumbent.

However, it seems as though that Mrs. Brosseau’s campaign was far from one, both literally and figuratively. During the campaign she was absent, and was noted to be in Vegas. Moreover, she only spent roughly $1800 on her campaign and didn’t even step foot into the riding itself. 

I understand both sides of the argument. The ability for her to be elected without even having an actual campaign is beyond me. It isn’t a fault at her running in my view, it was the voters themselves. How could they so blindly elect someone who barely speaks french and was absent most of the campaign?Blame it on political education or whatever reason you so wish to cite. 

I see her election as one that confirms Quebec’s desire for change. As such, although she was barely present in the riding throughout the election cycle, Quebecers of her riding demanded change and broke away from the Bloc Qubecois.

Her role shouldn’t be de-legitmized. She was within democratic rights to run for office and be elected, regardless of whether or not she ran a campaign.

The media should work with the MP elect and allow her to become more public rather than continuously harassing her over the dreadful campaign she ran.

Freedom is in Peril, defend it.

Following the 2011 election results in Canada, I think it is safe to say that Michael Ignatieff’s call to Canadians to “rise up!” went unnoticed in the majority of the province of Ontario.

The election of a Conservative majority will mean a few things for Canadians, none of which are desirable. The fact of the matter is, 60% of Canadians voted IN OPPOSITION to a Conservative government. That is something that the conservative party needs to take into account when implementing their policies. With the surge of Jack Layton’s New Democrats, primarily of which was seen in Quebec, the political atmosphere in the country has changed drastically. It is my contention that this change is for the better.

Where do we go from here? What do we do? I know that many Canadians, especially Canadian youth were involved in active political protests and showing up in hundreds of numbers at universities across the country in votemobs. This type of political action must not dwindle in the next four to five years. If we are to continue to oppose the contempt Harper government, we must start at the grassroots mobilizing local Federal party ridings regardless of the party affiliation. This mobilization will be as an effort to maintain support of the opposition party and the Liberal Party.

Knowing that the NDP holds the opposition status and seeing the historic crushing defeat dealt to the Liberal party, I can only imagine what is going through the minds of the Liberal MPs who withstood either the Orange crush or the Blue tide. There has to be restructuring involved in order to rebuild the party and ready it for the next federal election.

Although a majority situation was one that I was not favouring it is what us New Democrats have to deal with. As an opposition party our mandate should be to ensure that the voices of our constituency is heard within the confines of the house and, more importantly, ensure the Conservative government is held to account. We should move to ensuring that the Conservatives will not avoid the issues like the Afghan detainee scandal, or the issue regarding the illegal altering of a document which granted Kairos International federal funding as it was an NGO.

Our fight for representation, democracy, better health care and a strong economy is not over. As a citizen you should continue to hold your MP to account, regardless of which party line they tow.

The Plight of Canadian Democracy

Every election cycle, the youth turnout is rather dismal. If anything, this turnout signals the disinterest felt amongst Canada’s youth. More importantly, there needs to be something done to ratify this issue. Why? Well, it is clear the Canadian political parties have noticed the disinterest and have decided to omit policies which would be in the interest of Students and young people (With the exception of Canada’s left of course).

http://leadnow.ca/ is trying to rectify this issue by running a campaign that is curtailed to getting youth out to vote through “vote mobs” at various Universities across the country. This noble stride is something that is worth commendation.

Canada’s youth won’t be heard unless the current youth do something about this. This is why I encourage my fellow young Canadians to get out there, vote and make a participate in a political system that people in different parts of the globe are striving to achieve- democracy.

We owe it to those who are currently fighting in Yemen and Tunisia, to show them that Democracy is WORTH fighting for, dying for and that we WILL NOT take this for granted.