The idea that young people are not engaged is old Conservative rhetoric.
Hundreds of Canadian students, proud citizens, rallied in “vote mobs”
at the University of Ottawa, University of Vancouver, and Guelph
University. These are engaged and passionate people who insist that
their voices be heard at election time, even if Stephen Harper believes
he can win by speaking only to baby boomers.
Michael Ignatieff
has come out in support of these youth vote rallies, and his platform
includes the Canadian Education Passport, which provides $4,000 over
four years to students through the existing RESP framework. What does
Stephen Harper’s people do for young voters? Michael Sona, executive
assistant to Rob Moore, forcibly grabbed a ballot box on a university
campus, interfering with Elections Canada staff. This is more contempt
from a government that Speaker Milliken ruled against twice: once for
contempt for failure to disclose documents relating to Afghan detainees
and again over the Conservative government’s refusal to report to
Parliament on the cost of it’s Tough-On-Crime legislation.
Outside
of stealth fighters (with no engines) and $8 Billion American-style
super-max prisons, the promises in the CPC platform are deliverable only
four years after this election – and no government has lasted that long
since the Liberal government elected in 2000.Stephen Harper’s promises
will do little for students, families, or health care. We shouldn’t
choose to wait four years to see if Stephen Harper will do anything for
ordinary Canadians; we should choose a government that will work
starting right away.
I’m supporting Yves Fricot and Michael
Ignatieff because I don’t approve of Stephen Harper’s spending billions
of dollars on fake lakes and violent international summits in Toronto. I
want a government that focuses on students, families, and fiscal
responsibility. I’m a young Canadian, so Stephen Harper might say that
I’m not likely to vote on May 2, but that’s just because he knows that
my friends and I aren’t likely to vote for him.
Oh, and while
my parents’ generation is preparing to retire, Harper is saddling my
friends and me with the largest structural deficit in Canadian history.
He surely doesn’t expect us to vote for that; perhaps that’s why he’s
hoping we won’t vote at all.
Johnny de Bakker,
Thunder Bay