#elxn42

It’s the morning of the election, and I have one last too long post before I go vote. I was involved in a bit of a Facebook comment war on a post about the Conservative’s publicly stating on their website that they would support legislation to repeal same sex marriage in Canada. Somehow that turned into an argument about ISIS. That’s not the first time that’s happened. Recently my mom, who still lives back in Regina, informed me that some of her friends were upset about my post about the economy going (the Canadian version of) viral, because everyone but Harper will, “Let all the terrorists in.” No one saying it really believes it, it’s a distraction.

It really drove home the theme of this entire election:

Rich people tricking poor people into thinking that brown people are a bigger danger to them than a government that has repeatedly proved that it doesn’t give a shit about them or their families.

I have a lot of new followers (yo), so some of you might not know this, but I’m very sick. I spend more time with my doctors than my family. I have a great relationship with them, which is probably a good thing since I need them to keep me alive and functional. Even doctors from my past still get in touch to see how I’m doing.

My former GP, who I was with from ages 15-25, who got me through the really awful diagnostic process is a Kurdish refugee from Iraq. She and her husband fled during Saddam Hussein’s Kurdish genocide during the 90s. She was pregnant when she arrived, and despite having a new born baby, she worked her ass off to get re-certified in Canada. Since then she’s won several awards for her volunteer work helping immigrant and refugee doctors get their certification, and as well as mentoring female doctors. She works in a community clinic and invites med students to shadow her regularly. She frequently gives presentations about the unique health needs of refugees, and is just overall an absolute badass.

The idea that refugees like her are bad for Canada is absurd. The fact that someone could demonize refugees like her as a voting tactic so that they can keep more of their money is nothing short of monstrous. Some of the people who made the above statements know her. They know her family. They were there when her husband had a heart attack. They heard all about how her son won a spelling bee. And they STILL did it. Every time I think about it I’m nauseated all over again.

I’ve spent a solid week being furious and not wanting to say anything for the sake of keeping the peace, but yesterday put me over the edge.

So here are a few arguments which I’m breaking down separate posts because no one will read the whole thing. Please take a break from trolling the ICNA Sisters Canada page to click on the argument that is applicable to you, racist Facebook friends!

1. “Canada is at risk!”

2. “So many of the refugees are healthy young men, which means they’re undercover ISIS operatives. Otherwise they would stay and fight.”

3. “We have to protect Canadians”

4. “Niqabs/Hijabs/Whichever inoffensive clothing item I associate with Muslim women is oppressive”

5. “Because my last argument got shot down because of religious freedom etc etc, the niqab is now a CULTURAL choice, not a religious one. Here’s a link to an opinion piece on a blog that is now the official stance of all Muslims everywhere”

6. “Well fine, I didn’t give a shit about that anyway, but I WANT TO LOOK AT HER FACE AND THE MEAN LADY WON’T LET ME LOOK AT HER FACE AND I HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE EVERYONE’S FACE AND HOW ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO TELL IF I WANT TO BANG HER OR NOT?!?”

Basically, if you have a family income of over $200 000 a year and you say you’re voting for Harper because of terrorism, you’re a fucking monster.

If you have a family income of under $200 000 a year and you say you’re voting for Harper because of terrorism, you’re a fucking moron.

This particular tactic is actually what turned me into a switch-hitter voter. I’ve avoided making any real statement either way because I don’t think it’s particularly important this election, but I’m a life-long NDP supporter. And I really mean life-long. My grandma went to school with Shirley Douglas, who apparently ate too many grapefruits and was kind of a bitch, but I’ve been hearing stories about what a hero Tommy was my entire life.

Then as an adult, I made the decision based on 3 things, listed in order of priority:

1. Who is best for First Nations people

2. Who is best for healthcare (and I include women’s health under this banner. If you so much as make a face during the word abortion, you’re politically dead to me forever)

3. Who is best for unions (I’m not in a union, for the record, despite a weird internet rumour that made it’s way back to me last week)

But this election, I honestly don’t care. All 3 candidates will be fine. We’re going to hate them 6 months from now any way when they can’t enact change fast enough because they’re still trying to clean up Harper’s mess. At this point, I don’t care if our next PM put us 100 billion dollars in debt turning Ottawa into a Tropical Themed amusement park run by toucans.

Literally every single option is better than letting our country continue to be run by a racist. First the Tamil refugees were terrorists. Then the Roma refugees were ‘bogus’. Then all cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women were were solved when Cindy Gladue was found guilty of her own murder in April. Now the Syrian refugees are terrorists too. Who’s next?

I wrote a thing about a week and a half ago that was somehow shared over 17 000 times on Facebook, so I’m posting it here for any last minute undecided voters who are still under the hilarious impression that Harper is a good call economically:

I just saw someone tell a distant relative to avoid social issue debates when choosing a party, and that they’re voting Conservative to, “Preserve our economy, their family and their bank account. wink emoticon” After I was done throwing up from seeing a grown adult type a winky face, I wrote a novel in response. Then I saw that they worked for Shell and decided to just post it here instead because honestly, what’s the fucking point:

Our dollar is shit and our economy is terrible. There’s nothing to preserve. We’re the only G7 country in a recession and the IMF just downgraded our growth outlook yesterday.

Although we did have a ‘balanced budget’ after they sold our GM shares (at a loss of 3.5 billion dollars. It also removed the incentive for them to continue manufacturing in Canada, which lead to a cut of 1000 jobs in Oshawa alone within 3 weeks of the sale), cut 2 billion dollars from our contingency fund, stole 1.8 billion dollars from EI (which we all pay into), and took 900 million dollars from sick leave benefits for public service employees.

All of our money and resources were put into the oil industry. In addition to the negative environmental impact and the further strain on our relationship with many First Nations communities, that turned out to be a terrible financial decision as oil prices continue to drop. A few years ago, I knew at least a dozen men working on oil rigs. Now I don’t know any, because they’ve all either been laid off, or injured on the job.

Then there are the jobs lost from the massive cuts to healthcare and the arts. For the first time in 2 decades, the number of nurses working in Canada declined. My doctor is paying out of pocket for his patients to have pap tests, because the government no longer covers the costs, and he doesn’t want women to put off having them. And I don’t know a single person who works in arts or the media in Canada who hasn’t at the very least seen a pay cut while their coworkers were laid off. A lot of companies just fired all of their employees then hired them back as freelancers at much lower rates and without benefits. As a disabled person who works in the arts, the cuts to both sectors has been nothing short of devastating.

There’s also a promised 12 billion dollar increase on military spending (serious question: why?) while making massive cuts to Veterans Affairs. They cut lifetime pensions for injured veterans, shut down 9 offices (resulting in 89 jobs lost, leaving 8 employees to handle 17 000 veterans) and cut over 900 jobs from Veterans Affairs (mostly from the disability awards branch). Despite the massive increase in veterans in need of mental health treatment, there’s an average of an 8 month wait for veterans seeking mental help, and a 24% refusal rate for veterans seeking mental health help through their disability benefits. While this was happening, the government gave $500 000 in bonuses to management for cutting budgets (which they did really well, apparently, since they returned 1.13 billion dollars allocated for veterans services to the general revenue). The Conservative government then spent another $750 000 dragging out a class action lawsuit by veterans trying to get their pensions back.

Then there are even more court costs from the senate scandal, in which everyone involved in both the acts and the cover-up, with the exception of Mac Harb, was appointed by Harper. The court costs are on top of the cost of the RCMP investigation and the million dollars of fraudulent expenses.

Speaking of immeasurably stupid court costs: we’ve yet to hear how much we’ve spent trying to prevent one solitary woman from wearing a niqab during her citizenship ceremony, despite the fact that she was only the second woman in history to even request it. Those costs will continue to rise, by the way, because they’ve stated that they plan to appeal and take it to the supreme court.

In keeping with the string of really, really awful money decisions, we just engaged in a secret arms trade deal (literally, keeping it a secret was a part of the deal) with Saudi Arabia, a country that is schedule to crucify one 17 year old and behead another for taking part in a protest. They also just threatened all of their citizens with execution if they post anything negative about the government on the internet. We sold that country military equipment and promised to keep it a secret. That’s goddamn batshit cowsuit crazy, and gives a lot of insight into why our government continues to refuse to sign the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty (we’re the only NATO country not to do so, despite pressure from all of our allies). Had we signed the treaty, we would have had to report the deal to the UN, at which point it would have been rejected because of the aforementioned human rights violations.

And all of that is without getting into issues like missing and murdered Indigenous women, cuts to Canada Post, bill C-51, the complete inaction re: Syrian refugees, the lack of safe drinking water on reserves, the terrifying food deserts in Canada’s North, the inaction on the Truth and Reconciliation report, our rapidly deteriorating international reputation, the admitted lip service to environmental concerns so Europe won’t call us out about the oil industry, the mass deportation of Roma refugees, the cuts to healthcare for the non-Roma refugees, the cuts to international aid, the cuts to CBC, the cuts to women’s health funding, the blatant Islamophobia, the baldfaced lying about marijuana, and Harper’s refusal to not have Lego hair.

We’re currently living in the worst possible Bush-era SNL sketch. We’re past the point of parody. We’re doing everything we’ve historically made fun of Americans for doing, only somehow worse because of our unearned, smug self-righteousness from decades of self-identifying as the world’s peacekeepers. It’s gross. It’s so gross.