In a letter to the editor in the April 11 Pique, Mr. Raine encouraged young people to dare voting Conservative: “be strong, bold, courageous and willing to blaze a new path forward open to change and ready for the adventure.”
Looking closely at Pierre Poilievre’s policy wish list I don’t see any of these ambitions reflected. In fact, under his leadership we would be going backwards to a focus on resource extraction, including building more fossil fuel infrastructure, just the way it is now done south of the border—drill, baby, drill—Canada-style.
For young people to be bold, courageous and open to change—at least in my books—would be to recognize the mistakes of the past, change course in Canada to work on a future of renewable energy and make Canada an industry and research powerhouse that could be an example to the world of how this can be done and for Canadians to prosper economically at the same time.
But how would that translate to the choices in the voting booth on April 28? And here I have a lot of sympathy not just for young voters, but for everybody who gets discouraged and maybe doesn’t want to vote at all. Our outdated first-past-the-post electoral system quite frankly sucks. Many of us are “forced” to vote against a political party, rather than the party that better reflects our personal beliefs, because we are afraid of wasting our vote.
So my wish is that young AND old will keep pushing for electoral reform, long after this election is over.
