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The Citizen, 2019-09-19, Page 5Other Views Older definitely isn’t wiser Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense As I’ve watched the preening and prancing of the political parties vying for the federal leadership, I’ve come to the realization that none of them really fit with the vision I have for Canada. First and foremost, I don’t believe in fairytales. As much as I love comic book heroes, stories about dragons, knights and science fiction, I’m not fool enough to believe that they are real. On the flip side, I’m not fool enough to believe that climate change isn’t real, unlike some politicians like Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada, so odds are that party won’t be getting my vote. Unfortunately, that’s the only mainstream political party (and it pains me to call a climate change denier part of Canada’s mainstream political discourse) that I can eliminate easily. Let’s start with the Conservative Party of Canada. If its leader Andrew Scheer is anything like the Conservative Party of Ontario’s Doug Ford, we’re likely to not see eye to eye on a lot of things. I think social services are very important to the Canadian identity, so the ongoing cuts in Ontario have soured me on agreeing with Conservative policymakers. Education, for example, is important and needs to be well-supported, and while I may not agree with everything in the education system, the blind hacking and slashing the current provincial government has employed won’t be what’s best for Ontario’s children. Healthcare is another example and, while these are provincial concerns, the simple fact is that Scheer will have trouble disentangling himself from the decisions that Premier Doug Ford has made, which could hurt his chances in Ontario. I mean, I know that the two parties are two separate entities with different leadership and drives, but I can’t help but lump them together. Beyond that, I’m a firm believer in equality for all people, regardless of gender, sexual identity or race, and even if Scheer says issues like a woman’s right to choose won’t be discussed by his successful government, there’s ample evidence he has MPs and MP hopefuls who don’t necessarily feel that way. That said, there are a lot of Conservative tenets I agree with: reduced oversight in some areas is needed (reduced, not eliminated) and we do need to cut spending in some places. A prime example is humanitarian initiatives. I’m not against them, quite the opposite, but I think it should be up to the individual to donate to those kind of causes. The Liberal Party of Canada could take a page from Morris-Turnberry Council’s playbook as council members decided recently that the municipality would not donate to initiatives that ratepayers could choose to donate to themselves. The idea is that taxes should be used for operating the municipality. I’m all for humanitarian initiatives and I love participating in fundraisers for them, but that’s my choice, whereas government-focused initiatives take that agency away from ratepayers. And I’m not one of those fools who thinks taxes should go down: you can’t cut your way to success, but you can trim the fat and redirect taxes to more universal initiatives, like improved healthcare. Housing stock is a crucial issue for Huron County, but the only party with an actual plan to address it seems to be the NDP. While both the Liberal and Conservative parties have plans to make it easier to buy homes, they don’t have anything concrete to address the shortfalls of homes in rural areas. The NDP have committed to creating 500,000 affordable housing units. Unfortunately, as is usually the case for such commitments, it likely will be implemented in urban centres and have less of an impact here. Fortunately, the NDP also has plans for higher tax benefits for buying homes and longer mortgage terms for first-time buyers. So the other parties could take notes from the NDP when it comes to homes. The Liberals are also falling a bit behind in personal tax issues. While other parties have ideas like removing tax on heating bills, offering incentives for energy-efficient appliances and increasing taxes on the extremely rich, the only firm comment the Liberal party has made thus far is to cap stock options for employees at large companies. Thus far, only the NDP has spoken to childcare, saying it will invest in creating affordable childcare opportunities. As I’ve written before, I’m behind that and it’s not just because I’m a father, but that affordable childcare (without miles-long waiting lists) is attractive to families, which could help with our labour force shortage in Huron County. So, as I’ve laid out here, there are ideas presented by each of the parties that I’m behind, but there are also a lot of misses presented by the parties, so I can’t find a platform I’m behind. Why tackle this? I’ve been asked which party I support, and the answer is none. Where does that leave me? Well I typically weigh the local representatives and hope they do a good job of representing what’s important to me and what’s important to Huron County. Unfortunately, I haven’t always been right, but for me it’s the best decision to make. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019. PAGE 5. Be smart, vote well With the federal election campaign officially beginning last week, you owe it to yourself and your country to vote, of course, and to ensure you make an informed decision about who you want to lead Canada into what is sure to be a tumultuous and crucial next four years. While that may sound like a no-brainer to most reading this, it really isn’t in the grand scheme of things. If you’re reading this newspaper, you’ve taken an interest in your community and have committed to consuming local news from a trusted, accredited source and you take the time to read articles from start to finish. So, no doubt you’ll put plenty of thought and research into your decision. With many others, however, we’re not that lucky. Our company President Keith Roulston often writes about this and there’s really nowhere else to start except for voter turnout. People around the world are protesting, fighting and dying for the right to choose their own leaders while here in Canada, where we have that right, we’re lucky to have a year in which half of the population cast their vote. Last year’s provincial election saw a turnout of just under 57 per cent, while the 2015 federal election saw the high turnout of 68.3 per cent, which is still just over two-thirds of the population, up from 61 per cent in 2011. First and foremost, vote. It can be for anyone, but make sure you vote. Participation is the only way this system of democracy, though imperfect, can work for all of us. Next, be sure that you’re informed. And when I say informed, I refer back to my comment about reading The Citizen. Read your news from accredited news sources, do your own research and attend all-candidates meetings. If you see candidates on the street or out at events, ask them questions. If you’re a staunch Conservative, don’t just seek out current Huron-Bruce MP Ben Lobb and tell him how great of a job you think he’s doing. Ask him questions about the future, votes he’s made and his hopes for the riding. If you see Liberal Allan Thompson or NDP representative Tony McQuail, ask them questions too. Don’t hide from discourse and try to learn about other parties. That, of course, goes the other way as well. Life-long supporters of left-leaning parties could learn from a discussion or two with Conservatives. If those discussions solidify your current political stance, then that’s a great, feel-good story. However, if your mind is opened to new ideas, that’s never time wasted. In this day and age, however, what we really need to talk about is media literacy. Your vote is hotly contested and there are hundreds of ideologies pulling you in different directions. Highly-funded third-party organizations are all over social media working to influence voters. Cambridge Analytica, a major player behind U.S. President Donald Trump’s election and the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, has bragged about having up to 5,000 data points on over 220 million Americans and many more around the world. The puppet masters behind the internet curtain know how to push your buttons and how to change your mind. They know which videos to show you and which issues to raise. Think twice before sharing something or passing on information that seems too stupid to be true. Become your own fact-checker. We all have powerful encyclopedias in our pockets and we owe it to ourselves to do better. Like a skilled carpenter measures twice and cuts once, we should Google constantly and read vociferously before casting our one vote. When Canadians go to the polls in the federal election this October, they will choose between three parties led by men in their 40s. In the last U.S. presidential election the choice was between two leaders in their 70s. Which country is luckier? At 48, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be the oldest of the party leaders in Canada’s election. Andrew Scheer of the Conservatives and Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats are both just 40. Meanwhile next year’s U.S. election might choose between leaders who are even older than in the 2016 election, since Donald Trump will be four years older than when he was elected and Joe Biden, the current Democratic Party frontrunner for the presidential nomination, is 76. Traditionally elders were honoured for their accumulated wisdom, but Donald Trump has blown that idea out of the water. Societies that honoured elders tended to be societies where change comes slowly. In our world where there are technological revolutions every 15 minutes, it’s virtually impossible for someone who’s over 60 to keep up with change. I’m not quite sure why Trump, Biden and Democratic Party contender Bernie Sanders, (who’s 77) want to lead their country. Most people by their age want to slow down, maybe play some golf – though being President doesn’t seem to interfere with Trump’s golfing. They’re willingly making themselves the brunt of jokes by younger people. One Washington Post columnist joked Biden probably thinks Snapchat is a breakfast cereal. See now there’s why I wouldn’t put myself forward for a leadership position. I’m so far behind in the technological revolution I’m not sure I know what Snapchat is either, or any of the other hundreds of cellphone apps for that matter. I’ve still got a flip phone, for heaven’s sake. Of course at least I would be prevented from looking like a twit by belabouring people with stupid Twitter messages like Trump. Older leaders (with the exception of Trump), do bring the context that history provides to their decision-making. They can remember the useless deaths and misery caused when past U.S. presidents got their country involved in foreign wars they couldn’t win such as Vietnam (56,000 Americans soldiers, 2 million Vietnamese civilians and troops, and more than 700,000 Cambodians dead). They can remember when eastern European countries were not democracies, but dictatorships ultimately ruled by Russia, then called the Soviet Union. Older leaders can, or should, remember the long battle to overcome white supremacist policies that kept black Americans across the Old South as second-class citizens, unable to get a decent education because of segregated schools. They can, or should, remember when the voting system was rigged to make sure white politicians retained power. Correcting these missteps should be the proud achievement of the generation that is today’s senior citizens, though President Trump seems bent on reversing many of these advances with his “Make America White Again” policies. On the other hand, there are problems facing today’s citizens that the Baby Boom generation may not comprehend. Having pieced together a secure lifestyle they might find it hard to realize, for instance, that housing prices have changed so disproportionately to income that younger people despair they’ll ever own their own home. Not being as involved with social media, they may not realize that this modern miracle has a dark side, and they may lack the knowledge to bring those detrimental aspects under control. According to a recent article in The Atlantic magazine, people with different skills reach the height of their mental capacities at different ages. Tech entrepreneurs, chess phenoms and nuclear scientists are already in their decline by the time they reach their 30s. People who rely on fluid intelligence – the ability to reason, think fast and solve problems in unique and novel situations – also peak early. “The most profound insights tend to come from those in their 30s and early 40s,” writes Arthur Brooks, the article’s author. People like lawyers, judges and professors who depend on what’s termed “crystallized knowledge”, can stay on top until their 60s. Nobody, it seems, is still at their best after age 70. So having a choice of three people for Prime Minister who are still in their 40s seems to put Canadians in a pretty good place as they prepare to vote in October. According to Brooks’ theory, they should still be young enough to be capable of solving problems and having profound insights while also accumulating crystallized knowledge. They’ll need it all to deal with that guy south of the border who’s in his 70s and shows no wisdom at all. Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk I find myself in need of a political party