{"id":77,"date":"2006-01-15T21:18:10","date_gmt":"2006-01-15T21:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/?p=77"},"modified":"2011-07-29T16:01:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:01:50","slug":"lets-hope-canadians-think-twice-on-123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s hope Canadians think twice on 1\/23"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nI&#8217;m just about to send in my mail-in ballot for Canada&#8217;s upcoming federal election, hoping that it will arrive in time. Not that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ndp.ca\">my vote<\/a> usually makes a difference in Conservative Alberta, the domain of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ralph_Klein\">King Ralph<\/a> for the last 14 years (!).  Nevertheless, the latest polls suggesting that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenharpersaid.ca\/\">Stephen Harper<\/a> and the Conservative Party will form the next government in Canada have me very concerned.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWatching this all from Vermont, where practically everyone I know wishes their own federal government were pro-Kyoto, pro-same-sex-marriage, pro-public healthcare, and against the war in Iraq, it&#8217;s all a bit surreal to think that we&#8217;re seemingly about to elect a that has argued the opposite position over and over again. I would be one of the last people to argue that the Liberals have been a shining example of a great vision for the future of Canada, but things like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newswire.ca\/en\/releases\/archive\/January2006\/13\/c2160.html\">the less discussed aspects of the Conservative platform<\/a> and the potential for the &#8220;shining lights&#8221; of the Conservative party to form <a href=\"http:\/\/rickmercer.blogspot.com\/2006\/01\/conservative-cabinet-revealed_09.html\">the next federal cabinet<\/a> are, needless to say, very worrisome to many of us. Let&#8217;s hope that if Harper does win, it&#8217;s not a majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m just about to send in my mail-in ballot for Canada&#8217;s upcoming federal election, hoping that it will arrive in time. Not that my vote usually makes a difference in Conservative Alberta, the domain of King Ralph for the last 14 years (!). Nevertheless, the latest polls suggesting that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada-eh","category-us-of-eh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}