I am not going to use this opinion space to tell you who to vote for.
But I will tell you to participate in democracy and make an informed vote. And I don’t want you to say yes so that I will leave you alone. I want you to say yes and then go out and vote on Oct. 20.
So I am going to try, using random metaphors and other means of coercion, to convince you why it is important to vote.
Imagine you are planning on making an omelette and you don’t have any eggs. When you ask your partner why they didn’t buy any eggs, they say “because they weren’t on the shopping list.”
Now imagine, in a huff, because they should have looked in the fridge and known you needed eggs, you go to the grocery store to buy eggs and there isn’t any.
Confused, you ask the clerk at the till where the eggs are and they say that the manager is allergic to eggs so they don’t stock them anymore.
Doesn’t make sense does it? Well, the same thing could happen at city council if you don’t go out and vote. As much as politicians are supposed to be representatives of their constituents, each has their own life experiences and their own agenda that they bring to the table. It is up to the voters to make sure that their needs are being represented in those conversations.
Still can’t see what I’m getting at? Makes sense. This is all a little weird. Let me try something different.
I had the opportunity to sit down with the leader of a conservative party in Alberta a few years ago. At the time the government was beginning to discuss implementing a $15 a hour minimum wage.
Now, before you get up in arms, I am not here to debate the pros and cons of raising the minimum wage. What I want to talk about is how I couldn’t relate to this politician.
They were against raising the minimum wage because they thought that if people made more money they would just go and invest it in businesses outside of the province.
“If I put a pile of money on the table right now, what would you do with it?” he asked us.
It was a rhetorical question. But it shouldn’t have been, because if there was a pile of money on that table that I could help myself too I would have paid off some of my debt and bought groceries. The good kind instead of the canned soup kind.
This is why we need to vote. Because we need people to represent a wide variety of interests.
Yes, there are people, when they get a raise, they invest that money. Good for them. We need those people. However, there are also a lot of people who would use that money to pay for electricity, or new shoes for their kids or for food, good for them, we need those people too.
If everyone goes out and makes an informed vote, in theory there will be a wider variety of people sitting at the council table and the solutions they approve will be made with a wider variety of people in mind.
Don’t agree with me on this? Go vote and prove me wrong.
For coverage of the municipal election go here.