We live in a democratic society. That means the people that call themselves Canadians (or at least the people Elections Canada recognizes as eligible voting Canadians) have an opportunity to have a say in who runs the country.
It’s been like that for hundreds of years – and with every hope in the world, I pray that for us it doesn’t change from anything BUT that anytime soon. The problem, though, is that we seem to have short-term memory lapse.
See, it was only last year (that’s right – we’re already one year into this four year term) that we voted these guys in. Now, we’re calling for their heads.
Typical.
See, everyone is going out of their minds that the Government that just brought down the budget last week is slashing and burning left right and centre, but yet, these are the same folks who gave these guys a majority in the last election. I mean, like the old adage says –you get what you pay for, don’t you?
Well, in this case, I guess people could say that you get what you vote for. Right? If only.
In our case, when it came to the federal election, we were faced with a situation where only a little over 61% of eligible voters actually voted. Now, that’s really not anyone’s fault but our own, because if we have a democratic right, we should very well follow through on it.
The problem, though, is that out of that 61% of people, only 40% ended up voting for the guy whose cutting all the cash out of the budget. The one who just raised the price of Marine Atlantic, changed the EI system, cut ACOA and the CBC, and not to mention, forced me to work an extra two years before I can retire.
Yeah – that guy.
So let me do that math – which admittedly isn’t my best subject, so please drop me a line if I’m off the mark on this one.
Let’s say Canada’s Population is 34 million. So 60% of the country voted, which means 20.4 million marked an X. Out of that 20.4 million, 40% voted Conservative. That comes to about 8.16 million.
Let’s for the sake of argument, then, say that everyone else didn’t really care enough about what was going on with the election to vote, so to say they ‘wanted’ someone there, isn’t probably an accurate statement.
So taking that 8.16 million, now, and dividing it by our original number of 34 million, we find that roughly 24% of the country wants this guy to be Prime Minister.
Should we be angry about the cuts? Oh you betcha – but don’t forget that there are other things we should be talking about as well. This being one of them.
– Rudy Norman
