It starts with education

The political system in this country is broken. Don't take my word for it. Watch the latest episode of At Issue and listen to Maclean's Andrew Coyne say the same thing.

We are on the brink of our 4th election in 5 years and, realistically, very little is going to change in those election results. A few ridings may switch hands. We may have a Liberal minority government instead of a Conservative one. A couple of party leaders may retire/resign. But none of those, or even the collection of those, events will change the political system in this country.

The Conservatives have been governing for 3 years without much of clue on what they are doing. They have pretty much tossed out every small-c conservative principle in order to maintain their grip on the role of government. The Liberals seek to replace the Conservatives in the role of government but have yet to present any reason to replace them. While I don't generally agree with the NDP on anything, they are right when they say there isn't any difference between the Liberals and Conservatives.

Not that the NDP are any better. They are lusting after a role as Official Opposition and have taken that to mean "oppose everything". While I will give them credit to having a few ideas, the whiny rhetoric is as much of a cause for tuning out as the lack of ideas from the Liberals and Conservatives. The Bloc are lined up at trough called federal subsidies and, outside of Gilles Duceppe's performance in the debates, offer nothing to political process. The Greens are just too politically immature to effectively contribute.

The solution is still some form of proportional representation. However, the recent votes on MMP and STV in Ontario and BC have demonstrated something... we cannot start with the solution. We need to start with educating the population about the problem. I commend the Toronto Star for starting to do this.

What most politically aware people forget is that most of the country isn't paying attention to the day-to-day activities. As was pointed out on the At Issue panel (linked above) is that all the controversies (Mulroney, Dhalla, Raitt) were just drawing attention away from the auto bailouts. While the politically aware are well read on the details of each proceeding, the general public just sees 3 more corrupt politicians and more waste of their hard earned money.

Any wonder why they don't vote? They just got four (at minimum) more reasons that it's pointless in this last session alone. Depending on the age of the voter, the list of reasons for not voting might actually be infinite. This is why education needs to be the first step. They need to see there is a third option outside of voting and not voting...

... and an election isn't the forum where this education should be conducted. The election needs to be a reflection on how well the education has been received. This is the challenge of the main stream media. Inform citizens on how the system is broken and why instead of reporting on the daily symptoms of the problems. Then, just then, there may be a chance to fix things.

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