Canada PM triggers election with vote in October

Brian Lilley gets into how the different parties launched their campaigns in the vid below.

It's fair, I think.

Driving a blue car is okay, even a red car could be alright but an orange car......no thanks.

What's scaring me is how many friends who were long term CPC/PC/Reform supporters are contemplating doing the unthinkable and voting NDP, because they feel betrayed by Harper, and that vapid twit Trust-fund Truedope has no credibility.

A former Reform/Alliance/CPC stalwart who is a friend and neighbour of my parents has decided to return to politics and is running as an independent. He quit federal politics for awhile because of a disagreement he had with Harper and the CPC. Chances are he'll get elected.

They had better stock up on diapers, it's a long campaign and Harper knows all the tricks. I just hope we at least don't get a Reformacon majority.

I was thinking something more like this.

I've already got my rant prepared for when the Tories call asking for money.

Could be worse...

Hopefully watching the results in the Alberta election will make people think twice about that.

They likely feel the same way that my own MP, Brent Rathgeber, did.

Harper's made a mockery of the Reform Alliance's promises to reform the democratic system;

He's appointed a bunch of senators and other who've defrauded taxpayers just the way people used to complain Liberal appointees did;

He's pissed away public support for pipelines;

He's consistently failed to balance the budget, and only did so recently by sucking on the EI teat and draining the contingency fund;

He's presided over a huge increase in the national debt;

He's presided over a party that has confirmed cases of cheating in each of the last three elections;

He's crassly campaigned on the public dime with novelty cheques and his supporters defend themselves by saying that the Liberals did it too, when people call them out on their trying to buy our votes;

He's made a mockery of the idea that tax cuts return the money back to the people it belongs to, since with things like income-splitting and the fitness tax credits you only get the most money back if you meet certain criteria set out by the entity that confiscated your money to start with;

He's made the tax code in general much more complicated and messy overall;

He's passed half-baked terror legislation that has alarmed business leaders and stirred up opposition from devoted conservative bloggers, organizations and other supporters;

He's made a mockery of the legislative process by ramming through a bunch of different changes at once in huge omnibus bills without giving MPs time to properly review everything in them;

He's given Cabinet and Cabinet ministers a whole bunch of new discretionary powers that an NDP or Liberal government could wield;

Oh, and he's also launched us into the longest election campaign since about 1872. Given that the bill for a federal election in Canada usually runs in the neighbourhood of $250-300 million, anybody want to bet that this is going to cost us probably twice that much?

Harper's given conservatives plenty of reasons to be pissed off at him, and I don't blame them for refusing to support him again.

Hopefully, if he wins and he's reduced to a minority, he'll start remembering the principles the Reform party stood for, instead of just copying all of the same cynical crap we used to criticize the Liberals for doing.

It'd be a long time coming.