Robert Pogson

Here it is the day before the election and I have not made up my mind. I am not a decisive person in many ways so that is not surprising but the hopelessness of the decision-making process is. Each of the major parties has serious baggage with me:

• Lieberals brought in the damned “Firearms Act” in Ottawa and supported it in Manitoba,
• PCs did oppose the Firearms Act as intrusion into provincial affairs etc. but they did some really stupid things with healthcare, MTS and rumours are Manitoba Hydro would be “privatized” and
• the NDP want to nationalize almost everything and support the Firearms Act.

One of the fallouts of this weekend’s time spent with family was that my children tried to help me make up my mind. One said, “What about the Green Party?”. That’s cool. I like to be self-sufficient as much as possible. I like Nature to be left alone as much as possible. They do have an advantage for me of not being close to power so they might actually listen to my advice to embrace hydroelectric power as a valuable renewable resource and to use GNU/Linux and thin clients. We shall see.

The platform of the Greens is here.

They are cool with my being a hunter:
“Other benefits of our forests include outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing, timber, spiritual retreats, harvesting of food and medicine, and wildlife habitats. Large expanses of old growth forests in northern Manitoba must remain intact in order to maintain these human and ecological values.”

Their hangup with hydroelecticity is that major environmental impact is arising not from the needs of the local economy but actually subsidize exports of power to the USA at bargain-basement prices:
“Bipole III is only a small portion of the roughly $20 billion in planned hydroelectric mega-project developments that accompany Bipole III – and which continue to soar in cost!
The primary driving force behind the construction of these new mega-dams and Bipole III is to export power to the U.S.A. Recent investigations by the Manitoba Public Utilities Board have revealed that if we build these new dams, we may be exporting the power at a loss – leaving Manitobans with soaring electricity rates.”

I can live with the Greens, I think.

UPDATE It’s over. My candidate came in third of four. The fourth was my old ex-principal, Lawrence Einarsson of the Lieberals. Not bad for the first try by the Green party. Of 9729 votes cast my candidate received 300, 3%. It will take some hard work to advance but that fourth place was the Lieberal party which thought it was the “naturally governing party” when I was young… The Green Party did come in a distant second in one riding, Wolseley. The NDP lost a bit of popular vote but due to redistribution won all of the northern seats and most of Winnipeg’s. The Green Party needs to connect with more people. People vote. Issues do not. Education will be required to show people that green issues are important to them, more important than governmental slush funds and kickbacks.