It’s a provincial election time. I hate it when people say “Oh, there’s an election, but I just can’t bring myself to care.” But this time, I can kinda relate.
Thing is, I *do* care. There’s a lot of provincial stuff I care about. It’s just that from what I can tell, my local race is a foregone conclusion, I don’t think any of the candidates are awesome enough for me to feel like I should be personally sticking my neck out for any of them, and I’m a little bit annoyed with every one of them for one reason or another.
I actually mostly like the Liberal government’s record. I think the HST is a fantastic idea. I like green energy and I think they’ve been doing a reasonably good job of investing infrastructure. They’re taking credit for uploading services off of municipalities, which I think is a very good thing, but it’s taken them an awfully long time to do it, and they’re only just getting started at the end of their second term.
I also don’t like aspects of the campaign they’re running, but it’s not like any of the rest are much better. I’m really annoyed about the G20, but it’s not been an election issue, other than some noises from the NDP, and as there’s been no inquiry, I have no idea how much of that to lay at the feet of the province.
I would like to see people talking about building a new deal for cities, creating a sustainable funding model to get them less dependent on property taxes, which create perverse incentives and disproportionately hurt the elderly, of whom there will be many more in the near future. Other than talk of uploading and downloading, we aren’t getting any of that. And that’s thinking way too small.
I’d like to hear more about public transit infrastructure than just the Liberals patting themselves on the back for things like the LRT and the NDP promising to freeze fares (with no discernible plan to fund ridership growth).
I’d like to hear actual *innovative* ideas about how to solve Ontario’s problems. That’s probably too much to hope for.
So I don’t know. I’ll probably vote Liberal. I’m not a huge fan of the candidate, but I’m not a huge fan of any of the candidates. Not even the Greens. That just leaves me with my [algorithm](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2008/09/08/ugh-election/).