- I was born into the New Democratic Party, as the child of an electrician from the Red Clyde and a CCF'er from Hamilton. But I am not married to it.
- I do not hate the Liberal Party. I am often disappointed in it.
- I am perhaps closest in sympathy to the platform of the Green Party, but can't see supporting a party even more marginal than my own.
- I detest the Conservative Party in its present incarnation, but marvel that I did not detest it any less when it was more moderate. I suppose it's in the blood.
- I did an online quiz once to determine which party I should vote for. I came out as a Bloc Quebecois supporter.
On Personalities:
- Jack Layton. I have only heard him a couple of times on radio but he came across to me as somewhat smarmy. (But this is a Canadian failing. Think of Colin Mochry apologizing.) I wished he wouldn't feel the need to inject "hardworking Canadians" (or some such phrase) into even an answer on Afghanistan. And yet I agreed with him.
- When I first heard of Stephane Dion running for the Liberal leadership, part of me, remembering his Letters to Quebec, thought he'd be an upright, intellectually courageous leader, and part of me thought he'd be "a beautiful loser". I'm more inclined to the later assessment but we will see. I think he suffers from an academic impairment, always imagining a criticism to what he's about to say, and trying to head it off. This leads him to destroy his best lines.
- I have no opinion of Elizabeth May.
- Stephen Harper strikes me as someone who made his mind up years ago, and is just wearied and exasperated that most people don't agree with him. He sounds like a husband telling his wife for the thousandth time (because she just doesn't get it) that you need to do X to get Y. He doesn't even consider that she might be right, he has been telling her for so long. Since she is obviously incapable of reason, he puts on a cardigan and talks to her as to a child.
- I love Gilles Duceppe's accent!
- Carbon tax or cap-and-trade, whatever, just get something going. Putting a cost on carbon will be good for cities, because cities are good at saving energy. Canada is good at cities. And cities are good for innovation. Cities are good for culture.
- I want a foreign policy based on morality, that is to say, against war as an instrument of policy. The whole neoconservative thrust has been to relegitimize war. Mr. Harper is for war when it advances the interests of an ally, against it when it doesn't. I think we need to aim higher than that.
- I don't want the Armed Forces to be made a fetish, or the core of the Canadian Identity. They do a job, that's all.
- I think funding culture is important, just like R&D in science and technology.
- Oh, there's probably much more I should have an opinion on, and maybe I do.
