Time to vote for the greater good

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/06/2023 (1193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS we approach the upcoming provincial election this fall, it is incumbent upon us all to examine the various platforms proposed by the political parties. Elsewhere in the world, people dream of the right to participate in the democratic process, and many have died in pursuit of this right that many Canadians take for granted.

Some Canadians simply choose to honk.

In theory, we vote based on the party platform that best represents our interests and values. That’s the idea anyway. Lately, we often have to vote strategically to avoid the worst possible scenario.

That said, depending on the host of circumstances, there are many competing interests, both perceived and real. What stands to benefit one person may, in fact, negatively impact another. Moreover, there is a temporal dimension as well.

Simply put, short term gains may result in longer-term pain down the road.

Tax cuts, for instance, may increase the amount of money in one’s pocket at the time, but may come at the cost of such necessary societal elements, such as infrastructure or improvement to — and development of — social programming, like public education.

Examples of this conundrum — and its attendant consequences — abound. Climate change is most glaring one of our times and clearly forms a critical existential threat to the planet’s species. Yet, kicking the can down the road to maintain — or that are thought to maintain — certain standards of living becomes the preferred motivator. Former U.S. president George H.W. Bush famously proclaimed at the Rio Earth Summit back in 1992 that, “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.”

A more brazenly honest mantra has rarely been uttered.

It is one that many rich societies, including Canada, buy into wholeheartedly. As such, we continue to emit more carbon as the planet, and life on it, lurches towards climate catastrophe.

Recall Trudeau’s quip in 2017: “No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there.”

There are many other examples.

If something doesn’t have an immediate dollar value, investment is often undervalued. In election-cycle democracy, where the primary incentive is to win votes, short-term thinking with immediate individual rewards that may in fact harm the collective good in the long term are very appealing for politicians to promote and the public to support.

In Manitoba, we have seen the devastating impact of short-sighted decisions. When you cut social services to reward the wealthy, society crumbles. When economic development is based on more sprawl, the city of Winnipeg literally erodes to ash.

This can have downright harmful results that to an outsider may seem completely unintelligible, if not overly backwards. The genius of populism is to convince people to vote against their own interests. Nowhere is this on display in more grandeur than Trump’s America, but there are plenty of other examples globally.

Modi’s India. Duterte’s Philippines. Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Smith’s Alberta.

Here in Manitoba, while perhaps lacking the extremism seen in other regions and countries, we nevertheless have several pressing issues that are not amenable to short term solutions.

There are countless examples.

As is the case globally, the most pressing is the need for more intensified climate change mitigation strategies. However, we are also seeing crises on a number of social fronts, including homelessness, a broken healthcare system, a financially strapped educational sector, and so on.

Property owners recently received cheques in the mail originally destined to support the public education system. It’s hard to resist the short term delight from “free money,” but the long-term impacts will result in larger classrooms, fewer programs for the kids that need them, and a mushrooming of private schools for the elite as the public system is shocked to oblivion.

As the world confronts increasingly urgent crises on a number of levels, the importance of holding our politicians accountable and forcing long-term thinking is more crucial than ever.

When candidates approach your door this summer, ask them what their vision is for Manitoba 50 years from now. Will it be just, sustainable, and focused on the collective?

Will it be kinder and gentler? A place where justice is nurtured?

Or will it be tolerable for the rich and a nightmare for the growing poor?

Is theirs a vision of hope or one of greed, hate, and despair?

It’s time to vote with the future in mind — a collective future that includes everyone.

Andrew Lodge is medical director of Klinic and Matt Henderson is a Winnipeg educator.