Let me start off by saying that I don’t care what anyone’s political views are. That’s not what this post is about.
This evening on CBC was the much talked about, seemingly annual, political debate. The Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, and Quebecois parties were represented. As ruled by the courts, the Green party was not allowed to participate – I don’t want to get side-tracked by the reasoning behind that.
Over the two-hours there were six questions asked by Canadian citizens to the politicians, approximately 20-minutes given to each question. Two candidates were pitted head-to-head against one another, and then the other two candidates were allowed to give their side.
I thought the format was really good, but I’m less than impressed with the responses.
Overall, I feel less enchanted by the whole political process. None of the candidates seemed to have “won” the debate, heck it seems like none of the questions were even answered.
I think that I have less respect for the candidates. Not one of them, in my opinion, did anything memorable. It was all political jabs at one another. More of the same, but this time televised with all of them in the same room. Sure, they reiterated what’s been covered by the media for the last few years and more-so in the last couple of weeks – so for those people who haven’t paid attention to the media it might be seen as “insightful”.
I have a sour taste in my mouth. Is this what our citizenship wants as leaders? People who are relatively petty? People who cannot work together?
I’m not suggesting for a moment that we need politicians to sing Kumbya. I understand the need for debate and getting alternative views on the table. But tonight appeared to solely be verbal spew. Nothing to take to heart.
Leaves me with one question – why bother with the debates at all?
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Life stream as of 2011-04-17
It doesn’t matter who Rosalee or I voted for. That’s not the point of this article.
The situation
No, this has nothing to do with Jersey-shore characters.
Back in 2007 we received the keys to our brand new house in the brand new sub-division we bought in. We officially moved into the house in mid-January 2008, and shortly afterwards we both updated our addresses for our passports (they needed renewal anyways), OHIP and Driver’s Licenses.
We both knew about the By-Election that’s happening today – from media coverage, mass mailings we’ve received and all of the phone calls from the various candidates offices asking for our support.
Earlier today I had a thought – I wondered why we hadn’t received a voters registration card or any details in the mail, so I went to this page to lookup where to vote.
Once Rosalee came home, we both headed over to the venue. Immediately we were greeted by a gentleman who asked if he could assist. We told him that we never received a card in the mail. He pointed out a booth to his right for us to walk over to. We went to the booth, and gave our driver’s licenses. The lady flipped through her binder, and found Rosalee’s name, but it had the wrong address. It had an address that’s one street behind ours – but it had the right house number and the right postal code! I don’t get it! From everything that I can find, our postal code is valid for only even numbers on our street, and odd numbers on the street behind us.
When she went to look-up my name, I wasn’t in the book at all. My cousins are – they moved into the area within the last year, and we’ve been here nearly three.
How can the municipalities have our details right and not the fed’s? We received all the information for the municipal election without any problem. There is absolutely no reason why I wasn’t on the federal list for today’s vote.
My opinion on the solution
There needs to be a unified connection and communication between database systems and storage procedures. Once someone updates or applies their address for a vehicle registration, health card, driver’s license, tax submission, marriage license, etc it needs to trigger other updates to happen. The government MUST start a system to gather census details, and merge it with the appropriate areas. Yes, that’s a very high-level overview as to how the systems should run, and yes, there are a lot of technical details and processes that would have to be ironed out. And yes, it will cost some serious cash to make it happen. but it’s a one-time deal. Once the system is up and running, it should catch nearly all of the changes, and make for a more customer-focused experience for all Canadians.
Conclusion
No system is perfect. There will always be someone who has a strange exception and won’t be put through.
The time to start on it is now. The population growth is increasing at such a rate and the cost of services are increasing, it only makes logical and financial sense to get started on it now.
Want to know how the electorial race is going? Visit the Elections Canada website for preliminary results.
Follow-up
What do you think?
Can the government get something like this going?
Should they invest the money to get it going?
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Chapsticks were received
