Social Justice
Are you ready to vote?
BY BRITTNEY CHANNER
It’s election time in the country once again; the time where Canadians near and far exercise their right to vote and make an important decision on who they believe is best suited to be Canada’s federal leader. For many Canadians election time or “voting season”, as I like to call it, can be filled with excitement as individuals prepare to listen to ongoing debates between the federal election candidates.
However, for others, election time can surely bring out emotions of fear and indecisiveness in people since the choice of who you vote for can essentially affect the future either positively, negatively or both. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that no matter who you vote for on October 21st, 2019, it is curial to have a firm grasp of each party’s platform.
In Canada, there are roughly 16 political parties that are registered with Elections Canada, however, for the purpose of this article, we are only going to focus on Canada’s top 3; the Liberal Party of Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party.
I was able to go on the websites of all three political parties to get a gist of what their stance was on particular issues; in hopes of giving you the readers a bit of background information that would hopefully make it easier to make a decision on whom to cast your vote for.
The Leader of the Liberal Party and our current Prime Minister is Justin Trudeau. The Liberal Party’s platform concerns itself with real economic security for the middle class of Canada. How will the Liberal Party try and execute this? Well, their website suggests that they will give families more money to help with the high costs of raising children.
In order to do this, the Liberals suggested cancelling tax breaks and benefits for the wealthy and introduce a new Canada Child Benefit that will essentially allow this to occur. In addition, they also promise to invest into job creation for young Canadians. It is evident that many students fresh out of university/college struggle with finding adequate work after they graduate, and this issue continues to be difficult to tackle. However, the Liberal Party promises to find a permanent solution to this ongoing issue resulting in more work for new graduates.
I must say that finding the Conservative Party platform was rather difficult. Although the political party has a website, I couldn’t find anything on what core issues they are choosing to stand behind during this election; nevertheless, I was able to find a couple of key items. The Conservative Party is led by Andrew Scheer who will become Prime Minister should he receive the most seats in the House of Commons.
The Conservative Party promises to remove the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from home heating and energy bills. They also want to create a two-year green homes tax credit for home owners to help pay for energy saving renovations. Additionally, the party is interested in putting an end to illegal border crossings at unofficial points of entry which includes changing the Safe Third Country agreement it has with the United States. Some of their ideas don’t sound too enticing to me however; let us not forget that as we draw closer to the day of the election, more of each party’s key positions on particular issues will become more apparent.
Last but not least, we have the New Democratic Party, led by Jagmeet Singh. His party ensures that there will be more accessible job training and lifelong learning for all. His platform includes a medicine plan that would cover every Canadian and put an end to impossible health choices and save families $500 dollars per year. Also, to tackle the housing crisis, the NDP vows to create 500,000 units of quality affordable housing in the next ten years with half of those units finished in five years.
It is evident that the political parties mentioned above, and the ones not mentioned all have ideas on how to make life comfy for Canadians and essentially create a stronger country. However, it is up to you, the readers, to do more research on each political party and analyze each party’s core values and examine how they line up with your own. Before you vote, please ensure that you do your research and make an informed decision for you and your family.