Facing an election like no other - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

As we approach the April 28 federal election, I sense that, as a senior citizen, this election is more difficult than any in my lifetime. 

 

I don’t mean the actual act of voting; I’ve already got my voter’s card and notice of where I vote, thanks to Elections Canada, an independent body. It’s not like the U.S. where voting is controlled by states and many of them manipulate boundaries and engineer who can vote to the advantage of the party their legislators prefer.

 

No, rather it’s because there are so many false sources of election information in these days of the internet. When I began voting, we nearly all got our information from newspapers or a relatively few news networks. Today’s voters often don’t trust these sources, though, as a journalist, I was taught to try to seek the moderate middle between all the parties. Not in the modern world of the internet.

 

In Canada, we haven’t fallen to the level of Fox News in the U.S. where they give a totally different version of events from traditional sources like CBS news or the New York Times. There have been right-wing attempts to create online networks here in Canada but they’ve never really succeeded.

 

But there are other distortions. My niece, who follows social media much more closely than I do, recently reported fake news that supported a right-wing agenda that supposedly came from CBC or The Globe and Mail, but didn’t.

 

Meanwhile my sister-in-law wrote about a  fake video claiming Liberal Leader Mark Carney is aligning Canada’s financial system with China’s. The video comes from the source ­Canada Proud, run by Jeff Ballingal, a Conservative strategist who earlier created Ontario Proud and BC Proud.

 

Obviously, by not reading the internet, I am missing many of the sources that are shaping our politics today.

 

It’s not that normal newspaper sources block right-wing sources of news. Recently, The Globe and Mail gave space to Preston Manning who, 30 years ago, founded the Reform Party. In his column, he predicted that if the Liberals form a government after the election, Western Canada will secede from the country. “A vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for western secession - a vote for the break-up of Canada as we know it,” Manning wrote.

 

But other Globe columnists hurried to dispute his prediction. They pointed out that the current polls show the possibility of secession would fail by 39 points in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and even 11 per cent in Alberta.

 

As well as these media sources, foreign governments are attempting to interfere in a free election. A federal investigation showed that, in past elections, the Chinese government sought to influence Canadian policy by helping to elect candidates that would follow their lead. Not only the Chinese, but also the Indian government is suspected of trying to influence the current election campaign.

 

All of this makes free and fair elections more difficult than ever - but also shows how important this is.

 

The very future of our country hangs in the balance. We have a U.S. president who has broken the Canada/United States/Mexico free-trade agreement that he negotiated and hiked tariffs on both Canada and Mexico. We can get around these tariffs, he claims, by simply joining the U.S. as the 51st state (the whole, huge country!).  In real life, we need to elect a Prime Minister who is best equipped to lead us in this critical situation.

 

Our country has never faced a situation like this. There have been tense episodes, but we have generally been friendly with our neighbour to the south since fear of antagonistic rebellious U.S. forces caused the joining together of various British colonies to form a confederation in 1867. Canada, following Britain’s lead, entered both World War I and World War II before the Americans, but they did eventually join. They came out of World War II as the most powerful country in the world.

 

They still are, though the Chinese government with its population of one billion is gaining power quickly. It should mean that the U.S. would want to build ties with Canada, Mexico, Great Britain and the European Union but President Trump is, instead, alienating his best friends, claiming we/they are taking advantage of Americans - all the while the U.S. has built the world’s most prosperous economy.

 

So, the April 28 election is one of the most important this old man has faced in his lifetime. We all owe it to ourselves and our country to seek out the most honest information available and, from this, vote for the party we can most trust to lead us in this difficult time. Our children and their children are depending on us!