I Will Never Vote Liberal Again, Until...

I vow to never vote for a Liberal candidate again until the party puts forward meaningful policies to reverse the growing inequality in Canada and to deal with global warming, in all its aspects.

Inequality - of wealth, of income, of opportunity - is a malignancy that metastasizes the longer it goes untreated.  It undermines democracy and destroys the middle class.   Any party that ignores that reality and does not give it a top priority for real action tacitly supports the wasting of our democracy, our economy and our society.

As Joe Stiglitz writes, when the major parties dodge the issue of inequality, democracy becomes "one dollar, one vote" instead of "one citizen, one vote."   The Liberal Party has been shamefully reluctant to champion this cause.

Of equal priority must be global warming - anthropogenic climate change.   We now know that just 2% of Canadians, just one in fifty, continue to deny the reality of man-made climate change.   If Canadians so overwhelmingly "get" climate change they also get the role that CO2 emissions play in endangering our planet.  They get the link between our emissions and the increasing threat that results.   At this point, what they need is leadership from a party with genuine policies on adaptation and remediation.

We need a party that is prepared to decarbonize our economy, our society; a party that will decouple Canada from its dependence on fossil fuel energy.   Canadian municipalities are engaging the realities of what confronts their communities.   Some of the provinces are stirring to life on climate change.   Yet the Liberal Party lags far behind when it has no excuse for not leading.

If the Liberal Party cannot embrace these as top priorities, they're not fit to govern and they certainly don't deserve my vote - or yours.    They earned their way from Sussex Drive to Stornoway to Motel 6 and they damned well deserve to stay there until they earn their way back.