This has been both the shortest and seemingly the longest campaign in Ontario history. I felt uninvolved. I was left out. The days of bounding up steps to knock on doors are behind me. The only job offered to me was to do phone calls. I was not interested. In this age when all the creativity seems to go to the Internet media, I could have livened up the print media.
What I saw in print from candidates, in mine and other ridings, was stuff that did not pass Go and went directly to the recycle container. What really surprised me was not much was said in this literature about the candidates. You would think if the party is at all pleased with its candidate, they would tell us why. All we want to know is what this person has done to make them worthy of representing us in the Ontario legislature?
Are all of these people just drones who will run, jump and vote as they are told? You would think the conservative in my riding was modest as the author of Bill 161. That was the act of the Legislature designed to help prevent class-action law suits against long-term care facilities that lost too many of their residents to COVID-19 because of negligence and inadequate care.
(You do know, do you not, that former conservative premier Mike Harris makes over $200,000 per year as chairman of Chartwell—one of the larger for-profit long-term care home providers.)
The paucity today of good political literature is having its effect. We are getting a poorer quality of candidates. Many are appointed as opposed to chosen by the riding. Their literature for the riding is nothing but a series of slogans.
We used to care.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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