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Election just first step in making changes

These are exciting times for our country — Canada’s 41st general election did not turn out to be the sleepy event many thought it would be.

These are exciting times for our country — Canada’s 41st general election did not turn out to be the sleepy event many thought it would be.

I wonder what you hoped for on Election Day, and whether you got your wishes? As for me, I thought I’d share with you some future-focused wishes I have for our country’s next government.

Unless circumstances are extremely dire, I dearly hope there will never again be an unscheduled federal election. We’ve had far too many in the last seven years, four to be exact. What nonsense. We’re only supposed to have one election every four years.

And, should there be no way around another unscheduled election, I hope it will be impossible to hold it while the voting public is distracted by as many important events as we’ve had this election. Canadian voters have been left reeling, from dealing with the spring school break and coinciding long-planned family vacations, exams at universities, Easter, Passover, a royal wedding, and income taxes due on same day as Election Day.

In a healthy democracy, elections would be held when voters have the time and energy to pay attention to important election issues. Holding elections at regularly scheduled intervals should help keep costs down and voter interest up.

Next, I would like to see some form of proportional representation replace our first-past-the-post system where the winner takes all. In our present system, candidates can be elected to public office with less than 20 per cent of the vote, depending on how the vote was split. This hardly seems fair. More than 80 countries use a system of proportional representation, also known as a “fair vote system.” Why don’t we do the same in Canada? I think voter apathy would disappear if people were confident their voice would be heard in Ottawa through a fair vote system.

When our elected representatives go to work on Parliament Hill after Election Day, I would like to see civility and decorum restored at our house of government. No more yelling, no more childish antics — please and thank you. It’s time the people we chose to govern our country started paying each other, and us, some respect.

It would also be nice to see our Members of Parliament sitting in the round, like the Knights of the Round Table, or in a semi-circular United Nations General Assembly seating arrangement. It’s high time we abolished that confrontational style of seating arrangement historically used in Ottawa.

I’d like to see climate change, global warming or, as some are starting to call it, “global change” taken seriously, too. It doesn’t matter to me what our new government calls it, as long as they get on with helping Canadian society cope and flourish within the new regime that it will bring. Instead of sweeping this issue under the proverbial carpet, isn’t it time we started sending signals to world markets Canada wants to be a force to contend with when it comes to developing and marketing new technologies to meet our planet’s new climate-related realities?

I hope our new government will see more women sitting as MPs once all the results are in. Women in parliament have been hovering near the 20 per cent mark since 1997, not even close to the percentage of women in Canada’s population. If we don’t get more women in the House of Commons this time around, I hope those who were chosen to form the government will do something to help remove barriers to women entering public office.

May our next government and all those in opposition find the moral courage to update our nation’s animal welfare laws. According to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, regulations under Canada’s Health of Animals Act allow horses, pigs and poultry to be transported for up to 36 hours without food, water and being unloaded to the ground for a rest. Add another 16 hours to that for cattle, sheep and goats. Oh, and the clock resets to zero once animals cross the Canadian border. This doesn’t make me a proud Canadian. What about you?

One thing’s for sure: change is a-coming our way. Helping our new government make important, positive changes — now that’s in our best interest.

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