If debate is healthy then the Oct. 6 gathering of local federal candidates in Alma was good for all involved.
Five of the six Perth-Wellington candidates (Green Party candidate Nicole Ramsdale was not in attendance) gathered to share their thoughts on election issues with local voters at the event hosted by the Optimist Club of Alma.
Local riding “all-candidates” meetings provide an important counterbalance to national election campaigns, which tend to be tightly-focused on party leaders and too often get side-tracked into peripheral wedge issues.
While the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement and other issues of national urgency were discussed at the Alma function, it is always interesting to see which issues emerge from the questions submitted by members of the audience – the local electorate.
In addition to citing by rote from their parties’ well-known platforms, candidates were asked to expound on topics like doctor-assisted suicide and municipal infrastructure funding. Such questioning provides not only a closer glimpse into the local candidates’ psyche, but into the local community’s as well.
Another topic candidates were asked to broach was the concept of partisanship in politics and how they would work within the system if elected.
Interestingly, all candidates expressed their intention to work with other parties for the good of all Canadians.
It seems the road to Ottawa is paved with the same material as the thoroughfare to a certain warmer destination.
Leaves one wondering what happens when they get there (we’re referring to Ottawa here) to prevent the implementation of all those good intentions? Funding tied up in a complex application process no doubt.
Still, as legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously observed, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…” In addition, Canada, among the world’s democracies, continues to stand out for a multitude of reasons, as perhaps the best place to live on the planet.
On Oct. 19 election day will at last be here, 78 days after the campaign officially began and probably many months more after, for all intents and purposes, it actually got under way. Getting out to the polls seems the least we can do.
For information on voting go to www.elections.ca.
