Enough is enough - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

You know those blinding tension headaches you get sometimes? The ones that run from your shoulder up through your neck and straight to your temple? I get them sometimes when I’m a bit stressed here at the office or facing challenges at home. I also get them when an election is mentioned.

 

Whether it was the Globe and Mail story about Mark Carney and Doug Ford casually floating the idea of an early election to secure a majority for Carney or either man parrying questions about said story, I was experiencing one of those headaches. It was one of the bad ones. One that weasels its way into my eye sockets and causes one of my eyes - usually the left - to twitch. The only thing that eased the tension enough for me to function in a somewhat normal fashion was the relief I imagined through scenarios of me punching both men in their smiling faces and then somehow crafting a situation in which they’re punching each other in the face as well.

 

We here at The Citizen - I feel safe enough speaking about this thanks to discussing this repeatedly in editorial board meetings - feel there should be a rigid election schedule that cannot be altered unless there’s an emergency, like a war or an assassination. Capitalizing on a current political climate is not good enough. And, if the current situation, be it at Queen’s Park, Parliament in Ottawa or the council chambers of North Huron, proves challenging, it is the responsibility of the adults (it may be tough to remember that these are, indeed, adults) in those jobs to make it work. People in regular jobs don’t have an early election reset button they can press to shuffle the deck. They either make it work where they are or they leave and get a new job. It’s one or the other.

 

There’s a bit of a shine on an election in this job when it’s your first one, maybe, or if it’s a particularly important election, but, for the most part, they are slogs that bring out the worst people and then bring out the worst out of those worst people. Do you know why? It’s not sexy to ask about getting a road paved or an arena improved. 

 

Too often in election cycles, whether they be federal, provincial or municipal, certain eye-catching topics, which often don’t have much to do with the election at hand, tend to dominate the space and candidates are stuck answering question after question on issues that, frankly, will not impact the day-to-day lives of most of the residents who will be served by whoever wins the election.

 

This is also when those in echo chambers tend to put politicians on the spot on issues over which they have no control, but have to answer questions on.

 

But, most of all, the early election calls just undermine the whole democratic process. If voting is so very important, why are you disregarding the vote I cast just two years ago halfway through a four-year term? How will this early election make my life better? Will I be able to feed my kids for less as a result of this early election? 

 

No, it’s all political theatre and it’s games like these that create disenfranchisement from politics. When people dismiss politics as a lot of hot air that costs a lot of money and accomplishes nothing, moves like calling an early election to gain a few seats make it hard to argue. It entirely devalues the whole thing.

 

So, whether it’s a politician I like or one that I don’t, I can’t help but cringe when the idea of an early election comes up. Nothing makes you feel more like you’re being toyed with by your betters than something like that. Please - PLEASE - let this conversation fade away.