By Glen Turner – Special to the Sydenham Current
Time to sum up the longest election campaign in Canadian history, since 1872, and by far the most expensive.
Less than a week to go before the big day, and their DOES seem to be more interest than in previous campaigns.
As I predicted earlier, the Conservatives have ramped up the attack ads, since they’re behind in the polls. That was a no-brainer, of course. The Conservatives have been using right-wing Republican/American campaign strategies since 2006, a la divisive and negative and nasty campaigns. Listen or watch to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin et al on US media if you think I’m kidding.
Then look at the political hay being made by the Conservatives over something like the niqab.
Fortunately, it seems quite obvious that the other two main parties will NOT be lowering themselves to that level.
Congrats to them.
An article in the Globe and Mail even used the headline “Harper fate rests on attacking Trudeau”. And, of course, that’s what they’re doing. Sad, very sad, in my opinion.
A few things you might not know.
1) Bev Shipley didn’t even have a campaign office in town. I guess the expense of the social media spamming over ruled having actual people on the campaign hustings. Hmmm…
2) The Liberal candidate didn’t have a campaign office here, either. His office manager told me “it’s was too expensive”.
3) Advance polls had 2.4 million voters turn out to cast ballots, up 16% since the last election. That often doesn’t bode well for the party in power.
4) Watch for the leaders to be mostly in Ontario this last week of the campaign.
I hope you vote. I encourage you to vote. I hope you’ll read everything you can BEFORE you cast your ballot.
As I said in an earlier column, it will be interesting to see if we can get to a voter turn-out of at LEAST 70% this time, if not higher.
– Photo credit: Elections Canada
