April 18 is Good Friday. It's also the start of advanced polls for the April 28 federal election.
We can sit here and gripe about having advanced polls on a statutory holiday, when you have to pay election workers extra, or having the early voting during a long weekend, when a lot of people are out of town, but when you look at the timing of the election call, the deadline for nominations and the election date, the long weekend was the only logical time.
Voting prior to the election has become increasingly popular with each passing campaign. There are multiple opportunities to vote, and we can do so at the time that suits us best, rather than having just one day.
Regardless of whether you vote before the election (which I will) or if you wait until election day on April 28, it's important for you to vote. I'm not going to sit here and tell you who to vote for, or endorse a candidate, or try to nudge you in the direction of one candidate over the others. It's not my job to publicly back a candidate, and frankly, it's not ethical.
But I will remind you of the importance of voting. Regardless of whether you vote for your party of choice, the party with the best leader, the candidate you think will do the best job of representing the constituency, or even if you want to submit a protest vote, it's important to take the time to go to your designated polling station and to cast your vote, rather than let voter apathy set in.
(I vote for the person I believe to be the best local candidate, rather than the party or the leader, but it's nobody's business who I'll vote for, just like it's none of my business who you vote for).
It can be easy to feel apathetic about voting. There are more than 40 million people in Canada, a large majority of whom are eligible to cast a ballot. We can take the "my vote doesn't make a difference" mentality. But if we all had that attitude, we wouldn't have much of a democracy.
It's even easier to be apathetic in the vast riding of Souris-Moose Mountain. The Conservative Party of Canada has won here each time since its formation in 2003. Most of the election wins have been routs; the exception was in 2004, when we had former premier Grant Devine run as an independent.
And in the modern history of Souris-Moose Mountain (dating back to 1988), the only time a right-of-centre candidate didn't win was the Liberals' Bernie Collins in 1993.
It goes to show the long odds that face a candidate other than a conservative. But as Collins proved in 1993, upsets do happen on election night. And if everyone takes the attitude that they don't need to vote, because the Conservative Party's Steven Bonk is going to win in a landslide, then an upset could happen.
We're very lucky to have our democratic system. Is it perfect? No. Would it be nice to have some changes? Yes, but as we've seen before, those changes are often convoluted and leave us with a worse system than before. In a perfect world, proportional representation would work, but it's not a perfect world.
There are billions of people around the world who would love to have what we have – the opportunity to vote for the candidate, the party or the leader of our choice. The ability to have a protest vote if that's what we want. We don't have to worry about armed soldiers standing guard, nor do we have to be concerned about a party representative threatening us if we don't vote their way.
And yes, we have the right to decide whether we want to vote. If you don't vote, then don't complain when the government disappoints you.
You might not like the result on election day, and there will be a lot of people down here who won't be happy if the Liberals are re-elected. But regardless of whether it's the Liberals or the Conservatives who win, we know that the result is legit, and we shouldn't be questioning the validity.
We're so lucky to live in Canada. And so when we have the opportunity to vote, we should take advantage of it.
