Promises, promises

I am so sick of this election campaign. Thank god it’s only a few weeks long.

Tax cuts! Middle class! Climate action! Everybody gets a car! Oh, puh-leeze.

Last Friday most of the party leaders turned up at a climate demo. Andrew Scheer stayed away, but claimed he was there in spirit. The next day Scheer was in Alberta talking about creating an “energy corridor” across Canada to get Alberta’s tar sands oil to market. Quite what an energy corridor is or how he would create it isn’t clear, but it sounds a lot like he plans to tell BC and Quebec to go to hell and just make a federal land grab. Good news, you’d think, for Justin Trudeau, who bought a pipeline last year. A pipeline which makes anything Trudeau offers by way of climate action complete and utter bull shit. (I suspect Greta Thunberg may have pointed this out to him when they met last week.)

I don’t know why politicians are so obsessed with tax cuts. I don’t mind paying taxes, nor do I think most Canadians mind. What we mind is how that tax revenue is spent. Imagine a politician saying: “I promise not one dime raised by income tax will go towards building a pipeline or buying another fighter jet. All income tax dollars raised will be ploughed directly into healthcare, education and infrastructure.” Now that is a promise worth breaking.

All the political leaders are hot to trot with the middle class, the only people about whom they ever seem to speak. “Ooh, baby, vote for me. I’ve got what you need. “ Fuck off. I think I might have heard Trudeau at some point say “hard working middle class families”, but so far the only leader I’ve heard utter the words “working class” is Jagmeet Singh. When did the working class disappear? Call me a Communist (or a class bound Brit), but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being referred to as working class. In fact, if you asked me, that’s how I would describe myself.

As for poor people… Who gives a fuck about them? Oh, wait a minute, Jagmeet Singh is promising to get poor people access to dental care. Hurrah! (I know the definition of “poor” in this country and it is me.) Let’s make him prime minister so I can get my teeth cleaned.

Oh, except he’ll never be prime minister. As much as most Canadians like to think of themselves as free of bias and open to multiculturalism, the country is simply not ready to embrace the notion of a Sikh prime minister. So no dental care for me.

Roll on October 21. Let’s just get this over with so I don’t have to hear another false promise from a party leader for at least three years.

Ideal outcome as far as I’m concerned? A Liberal minority governing in coalition with the NDP. (Hang on. Liberals like to steal popular NDP ideas. Maybe there is still hope for me seeing a dentist again before I die.)

Nightmare outcome? Oh, god, I can’t even write the words. Nightmare outcome: the dimpled option.