As I write this, the outcome of the upcoming federal election is not known. For years, CFIC has hoped to create an elections guide that helps people to decide how to vote based on their values and beliefs. Or that provides a set of questions that voters can pose to their candidates. Already there are many tools the savvy constituent can use to help to make their decisions. However, as we come into the final days of the 2025 election my own decision-making process causes me to doubt how useful any of these tools are.
In my own effort to be a responsible voter, I visited CTV’s Party Platform Tracker (due to the timing of the release of Critical Links I am unsure whether this link will continue to work post-election.) As I read the platforms of each party, I find myself questioning whether they will make good on those promises and struggling to understand what the promises mean to me and to society. And discover that I am completely unable to understand the impact of the proposed deficits their promises will create.
The national debates (I watched the English debate) should be another tool to determine the best choice for the leadership of our country. However, I found myself attending to the candidates’ mannerisms, more than to their speaking points.
Vote Compass is the CBC tool “developed by political scientists to help you explore how your views compare with those of the parties.” However, many of the questions required me to weigh in on questions where I lack the appropriate background knowledge to decide. Questions such as “The federal budget deficit should be reduced, even if it leads to fewer public services.” My answer would be which public services would be cut? And even if that were answered, I would not know the impact of those cuts until they took place.
Going into the election, I had an emotional response to the candidates and to the parties which I have found has not changed throughout the campaigns. I am unable to determine whether my emotional response was the result of what those campaigns were telling me, or of my relative trust in the candidates. And I don’t know whether my trust, or lack thereof, is warranted.
One thing that I have worked hard to do is to see the bad points in my favoured candidates’ positions and to see the good points in others’ positions. It concerns me when our support for a party causes us to agree with everything that party says and to disagree with everything the opponent says.
By the time you read this, I will have cast my vote, and a government will have been selected. That government may or may not match my preferences. However, I will fight the urge to become more partisan (positively or negatively) because of the outcome. My hope is that others will join me in remaining open to the good that comes out of a government that was not the preferred option, and/or in holding a favoured government to account.
I find that too many voters see elections as a horse race where you bet on the winner. Other voters want you to vote strategically. If you do that, you are voting for someone you don’t want, in order to thwart the election of someone you presumably don’t want even more. I say why not vote for WHAT YOU WANT, for yourself and for your fellow citizens. I see voting as a referendum on peoples’ preferences, regardless of who is statistically likely to win. Even if your preferred candidate loses, your (anonymous) vote is counted in the records for future reference. Isn’t that how democracy should work?