Although this is not a political blog, as my readers have seen, I do blog on occasion about so-called “political issues” simply because from my standpoint, all of us are affected by the decisions made by those in office and as such, there should be a vested interest in what they do year round and not every 4-5 years (or if you’re in Canada, every couple of months as the case seems to be lately. But I digress). Invariably, such discussions often lead to the question of what political party do you support – are you Conservative or Liberal, Republican or Democrat. Personally, I don’t affiliate with any party as I do with specific issues and how each party addresses them. In some ways, you could say I’m a special-interests group of one.

It’s not that I don’t understand the need some people have to attempt to categorize people into these tidy political ideology boxes; with a background in the sciences, I’m only too aware of the concept of categorization to group items based on a given set of criteria. However, the political landscapes in Canada and the US have been undergoing significant shifts over the last decade, with Canadian politics moving more and more toward regionalistic party representation and the US demonstrating an excessive polarization in right-wing/left-wing ideological labeling. As such, this previous categorization of political viewpoints based on political party lines is becoming less and less representational or accurate in truly describing anyone’s position on socio-economic issues.

It’s for this reason that a post from a fellow blogger I met on Twitter caught my attention as it addressed this very issue. Click here to continue reading »”So What Political Stripe Are You?”

Yesterday, Canadians were reminded of just how much power they have as voters in a democratic society. At the beginning of the day, the news broke out that two national parties – specifically the PC and NDP parties – were forcing television networks to exclude Green Party leader Elizabeth May from the upcoming leadership debates for this year’s federal election. The reason provided by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP leader Jack Layton was that the arrangement between May and Liberal Party leader Stephan Dion to not run candidates in each other’s riding amounted to May being a closet Liberal supporter and her presence at the leadership debates would give the Liberal party two voices for their platform. The PC and NDP leaders went so far as to threaten to boycott these debates if the networks dared to include May. As such, the consortium of networks that carry the debates had no choice but to tell May that she would not be given a place in the leadership debates to present her party’s platform to the voting public.

As the day progressed and news of this exclusion of May from the debates seeped into the public conscious, something wonderful happened – the public got angry. Very angry. And with good reason – Click here to continue reading »”A Great Example Of The Power of Citizens in Democracy”