Well, another election has come and gone and all the campaigning that has occurred has me a little disillusioned.
It wasn’t all the promises that MPs and party leaders were making; politicians are always making promises and breaking them for that matter.
It’s not the politicians singing their own praises; they are on the campaign trail and just like a job interview, they must highlight their strong points.
The smear tactics are what disappointed me.
I’ve seen these types of techniques used in American politics – people said that President Barack Obama might not be born in America until he produced his birth certificate.
But while Canadian politicians have generally avoided this type of advertising in the past, it was front and centre during this election.
Some of the ads said that former Federal Canadian Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff “came back to Canada only to become Prime Minister” and have him saying that America is his “country.”
A timely – or untimely depending on your point of view – news report that leaked stating that Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton was caught in a massage parlor, 15 years ago.
Some news agencies have said that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have been initiating many of the attack ads but even the PM hasn’t been immune. Ignatieff and the Liberals launched a counterattack with ads taking aim at both Harper and Layton.
It said that the PM would give tax breaks to oil companies and big banks and Layton would increase taxes to accommodate $70 billion in spending.
An April 19 report from CBC News says that the Liberals are even complaining about supposed Liberal supporters calling people in Ontario at all hours of the day, or night for that matter – the report says that the calls seem to occur in ridings where there are tight races.
Steve MacKinnon, a Liberal candidate in Gatineau, Que., suggests that the Conservatives could be the ones behind the calls.
The Tories deny the allegations.
The candidates and leaders are well past their high school years but I really don’t remember this kind of behaviour when I was in high school voting for my school president.
Karl Yu is associate editor of the Grand Forks Gazette.