Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Edmonton-Strathcona Candidates can Smell What the Hacks are Cooking
So last night I went to the Edmonton-Strathcona candidate's forum held in the U of A Students' Union Building. While I'm not resident in Edmonton-Strathcona, and while the forum in my own riding of Edmonton-St. Albert was going on at the same time, I've already voted, I was on campus anyway, and I figured that as long as I was attending a forum that wasn't going to affect my vote it might as well be the one with all the hacks at it. While there are a multitude of candidates running in Edmonton-Strathcona (eight sounds about right, though I'm too lazy to check that), the only candidates present were:
Malcolm Azania (New Democratic Party)
Debbie Carlson (Liberal Party)
Kevan Hunter (Marxist-Leninist Party)
Rahim Jaffer (Conservative Party)
Cameron Wakefield (Green Party)
Some thoughts:
1. Debbie Carlson is a human wasteland, though the wisdom of my publicly saying such things about my Dean's wife is probably questionable.
2. There seemed to be some sort of a competition to see who could reveal the most sordid past: Azania was, of course, questioned about his allegedly anti-Semitic comments, prompting Jaffer to make a reference to his having lied about an interview his aide gave while posing as him. Later on, Carlson gave an emotional speech about her having been charged with fraud in 1991 (the speech including the rather questionable, to anybody with a basic understanding of criminal law, assertion that "[she] was found innocent beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law." I was expecting Wakefield to seize the mike and confess to having killed three nuns, or something. Repentance is very fashionable in Edmonton-Strathcona these days.
3. As with my own riding, the candidate who impressed me the most was the Green candidate. I suspect that this might be because the Greens, who will not win a single seat in the upcoming election, are unable to attract the sort of prima-donna-ish opportunists that the other parties can. Instead, they get earnest people who are committed to things like "democracy" and "representing one's constituents". Almost makes me sorry that they're going to do so well this election that they'll be poised to win a couple of seats next election, and will therefore be afflicted with the same rot as every other party.
4. A partial list of the things to whose existence Hunter fundamentally objects:
- personal income taxes
- parliament
- missile defense
- NORAD
- political parties
- the British North America Act
- Rahim Jaffer
- elections
- oxygen
- the cosine
5. Chris Jones, as is traditional at election forums occurring inside SUB, asked the most amusing question when he questioned candidates on their understanding of the division of powers in the Canadian Constitution and how the candidates would impose their wills on matters of purely provincial jurisdiction, like health care. Wakefield gave the best answer when he admitted that his strategy on preventing two-tiered health care basically amounted to providing adequate transfer payments and politely asking the Premiers to keep Medicare.
6. Mike Hudema started off his series of questions by announcing "I have a lot of issues". This prompted moderator Alex Abboud to cut in with "In the interests of time, I'm going to ask you to confined your question to one of them." "Okay," conceded Hudema, "I promise to ask about at least two."
7. My own question to Carlson on why, if health care was truly her number one priority as she was professing, she was leaving a legislature that is responsible for health care for one that wasn't went unanswered, as she took the opportunity instead to attack Ralph Klein's record on the issue.
To come: why I'm distrustful of government intervention in the economy.
|
So last night I went to the Edmonton-Strathcona candidate's forum held in the U of A Students' Union Building. While I'm not resident in Edmonton-Strathcona, and while the forum in my own riding of Edmonton-St. Albert was going on at the same time, I've already voted, I was on campus anyway, and I figured that as long as I was attending a forum that wasn't going to affect my vote it might as well be the one with all the hacks at it. While there are a multitude of candidates running in Edmonton-Strathcona (eight sounds about right, though I'm too lazy to check that), the only candidates present were:
Malcolm Azania (New Democratic Party)
Debbie Carlson (Liberal Party)
Kevan Hunter (Marxist-Leninist Party)
Rahim Jaffer (Conservative Party)
Cameron Wakefield (Green Party)
Some thoughts:
1. Debbie Carlson is a human wasteland, though the wisdom of my publicly saying such things about my Dean's wife is probably questionable.
2. There seemed to be some sort of a competition to see who could reveal the most sordid past: Azania was, of course, questioned about his allegedly anti-Semitic comments, prompting Jaffer to make a reference to his having lied about an interview his aide gave while posing as him. Later on, Carlson gave an emotional speech about her having been charged with fraud in 1991 (the speech including the rather questionable, to anybody with a basic understanding of criminal law, assertion that "[she] was found innocent beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law." I was expecting Wakefield to seize the mike and confess to having killed three nuns, or something. Repentance is very fashionable in Edmonton-Strathcona these days.
3. As with my own riding, the candidate who impressed me the most was the Green candidate. I suspect that this might be because the Greens, who will not win a single seat in the upcoming election, are unable to attract the sort of prima-donna-ish opportunists that the other parties can. Instead, they get earnest people who are committed to things like "democracy" and "representing one's constituents". Almost makes me sorry that they're going to do so well this election that they'll be poised to win a couple of seats next election, and will therefore be afflicted with the same rot as every other party.
4. A partial list of the things to whose existence Hunter fundamentally objects:
- personal income taxes
- parliament
- missile defense
- NORAD
- political parties
- the British North America Act
- Rahim Jaffer
- elections
- oxygen
- the cosine
5. Chris Jones, as is traditional at election forums occurring inside SUB, asked the most amusing question when he questioned candidates on their understanding of the division of powers in the Canadian Constitution and how the candidates would impose their wills on matters of purely provincial jurisdiction, like health care. Wakefield gave the best answer when he admitted that his strategy on preventing two-tiered health care basically amounted to providing adequate transfer payments and politely asking the Premiers to keep Medicare.
6. Mike Hudema started off his series of questions by announcing "I have a lot of issues". This prompted moderator Alex Abboud to cut in with "In the interests of time, I'm going to ask you to confined your question to one of them." "Okay," conceded Hudema, "I promise to ask about at least two."
7. My own question to Carlson on why, if health care was truly her number one priority as she was professing, she was leaving a legislature that is responsible for health care for one that wasn't went unanswered, as she took the opportunity instead to attack Ralph Klein's record on the issue.
To come: why I'm distrustful of government intervention in the economy.
