Canadian Election Watch - Day 36

I'm suffering from an attack of WMT: Weapons of Mass Turkey, so I'll keep this one short.

One more day of campaigning and then those of us who give a damn are off to the polls. Although there are certainly those of us who give a damn who aren't going to vote as well, considering the lousy options. As I've said before, I'd rather see an educated non-voter than an uneducated voter. I think we have far too many of the latter who just think they're following their ideology while they vote for people and parties who don't even really represent them.

How many times have you heard someone identify themselves as a conservative because they like small government while they ignore the huge government bureaucracies their parties have created? And during this time of financial turmoil, one in which nobody seems to know exactly what to do (how's that $700bn American bailout working out so far?), can we trust any of the major political parties who are all connected to the system to really look out for the best interests of the peasants? Obviously not. They all lie and they're all corrupted in one way or another by the smell of power. Grim, but that's where we are.

Elections Canada spent $277.8 million on the 2004 general election.
[...]
This time around, Stephen Harper's election call cancelled four by-elections which were set for September. According to Elections Canada, a federal by-election costs an average of 892,000 per riding. That means taxpayers will pay $3.5 million for the cancelled by-elections, since spending tallies are restarted once a general election is called.
source

How's that for so-called smart, Conservative fiscal management? And Stephen Harper, who initiated this unnecessary election with the hope of winning a majority, decided that gambling away hundreds of millions of our dollars was worth it - all for the sake of his overblown ego.

Call it fate or karma or whatever you will but, whatever it is, it looks like it's about to hit him in the ass on Tuesday. The only saving grace in yet another minority government under Harper is that his more right-wing tendencies can be kept in check. Do we really need a leader again who has to be tempered by the opposition because, if allowed, his social and fiscal conservatism would no doubt run wild? Haven't we got better ways to spend our precious time, money and resources?