Sunday, September 30, 2007

Vote No To MMP

After a lot of consideration, I will be voting "No" to MMP. There's a few reasons:
  • MMP tends to result in minority governments. While I recognize minorities can keep a "dictatorial" leader in check, and prevent any one party from implementing radical reforms, we have Senates in Canada (a house of 'sober second thought').

  • A minority government implies nothing gets done and too many games being played as the government remains busy trying to keep governing rather than getting anything done. I would rather the government push forward its agenda - whatever it is - and be judged on it, than 3 years of no action.

  • A minority government implies the government has to compromise its agenda, which is really what they were elected on in the first place.

  • I prefer Instant Runoff Voting, which is not on the ballot.

  • So a party gets a majority of the seats with only 35% of the people voting for them. I fail to see what the problem is. If more people voted it would have been fairer, but you know - the guys who didn't vote - consciously made that choice.

  • I don't like MPs being beholden and being blindly loyal to the party and party leaders. Even as it is now the "whip" has too much power.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Why McGuinty Is Wrong

As a life long Liberal and someone who will work the boots off for a Dion victory, I cannot bring myself to vote for McGuinty. The debate and his attack on Tory's plans for funding faith-based schools have soured me to him.

I have said repeatedly that I do not agree with faith-based schools at all, yet the way McGuinty has attacked faith-based schools is completely wrong. He pointed to Toronto not having cultural divides, racial riots, civil unrest etc. because kids of many cultures go to school together. His argument - faith based schools divide people and promote segregation is completely hypocritical. McGuinty himself is the product of a faith-based school - the Catholic system.

So, in effect what McGuinty is saying to us is, faith based schools are wrong and promote racial discord - unless it happens to be a Catholic education - then it's all good. If that's not discrimination and if that's not elitist and if that doesn't feel racist then I don't know what else will.

As Tory said, it's a question of fairness. Either fund all faith based schools or fund none.

Where I would differ from him is that I would choose the "fund none" option.