Toss Trost.

Pretty simple message here.  If you're going to vote in Saskatoon-Humboldt tomorrow don't vote for Brad Trost.  It's time for this guy to go back to the 1950s or whereever it is he came from.  We don't need the kind of sexist, anti-gay, outdated mindset he represents in our government.  So send him packing.

Disunite The Right?

This being April Fool's Day my thoughts drifted this morning to my former MP, Jim Pankiw.  He had said last year he'd run in the next election, and a March 26th Star Phoenix story indicates he's running here in Saskatoon-Humbolt.  Could he actually serve a useful purpose and pull votes from Brad Trost, and increase Trost's chances of losing?  One can only hope.  That's the only thing he actually can do in this election, drain off the idiot vote.  Trost isn't much better than Pankiw is.

Thumbs Down, Brad Trost.

Brad Trost is the MP for my riding. Since he's a member of the Conservative Party I had little reason to vote for him in the first place. And now I have even less reason after seeing comments he made to the so-called pro life site LifeSiteNews about government funding of Toronto's Gay Pride Week. Specifically this Trost statement got my ire going: "The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy...." How is a gay pride parade anti-family? Well, I suppose it is if you hold a narrow idea of family that never applied to everyone in the first place, and does so even less in an era that is slowly seeing silly prejudices against people for their choices of consentual sex partners fade away. And anti-life? Equally silly, since gays and lesbians are pretty much immune from causing or having accidental preganancies respectively, and hence are exceedingly unlikely to seek abortions for anything other than rape or utter medical neccessity.

Trost also said "Canadian taxpayers, even non-social-conservative ones, don't want their tax dollars to go to events that are polarizing or events that are more political than touristic in nature." As decided by whom? Somehow I doubt Trost would be complaining if someone got a government grant for a "Support Our Troops" parade, despite the political nature of such a function. Or how about the Calgary Stampede, which is becoming a lightning rod for a small but increasing number of Canadians who see it as meaningless cruelty to animals.(I'm neutral on the subject.) The reality is anything with a message beyond "Let's all have a nice day" is likely to offend somebody, and I wouldn't put it past some people to be offended even by something that innocuous.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to post about the current Canadian election campaign. There's going to be more than enough commentary as it is. But one thing I have noticed so far is very few election signs have gone up yet. I've only seen a couple in my riding for the New Democratic candidate, Andrew Mason. I suppose its early days yet, but his signs seemed to be up within a day or so of the election announcement.

I reside in the Saskatoon-Humboldt riding, and it will be interesting to see what happens this election given how close the last one was. The current MP, Conservative Party member Brad Trost, won by 417 votes in a hotly contested riding. Second place finisher Nettie Wiebe of the NDP came in only 18 votes ahead of Patrick Wolfe of the Liberals. The wild card was the notorious Jim Pankiw, the incumbent MP at the time. Its safe to say a lot what drove the vote in 2004 was the desire by many to get rid of Pankiw. With him gone will voter turnout drop? Trost has been relatively quiet as MPs go, which is not surprising given he's a rookie and apparently doesn't have Pankiw's pechant for outrageous statements and grandstanding.

As always I encourage Canadians to get out and vote if they can, even if its to vote for the candidate you find least objectionable.