We’re into the thick of it now.
Candidates for the provincial election are out in force, knocking on doors, staging photo ops and flooding the airwaves with campaign slogans.
In today’s paper, you’ll see our contribution to the rhetoric. We’ve put together a 12-page section that profiles the local candidates and looks at a variety of provincial issues and how they play out in Richmond.
Reporter Graeme Wood even tagged along with a few of the candidates as they went door-knocking to hear what constituents had to say about everything, from the 15 per cent foreign owners tax to wait times at Richmond Hospital.
Next week, three all-candidate meetings are planned in Richmond: See page 13 for details.
The hope is that, with all this exposure you, the Richmond resident, will get a chance to size up the parties, their policies and the individuals who hope to enact them.
Some may groan at all this coverage and view elections as one, long ad campaign full of vote-catching promises and strategic positioning. And if you’re only looking at the “horse race” element of a campaign, there is some truth to that. But elections are also about issues and independent organizations mobilizing to get their ideas in front of the public.
In this election, we’ve seen some great examples of that: a coalition of affordable housing advocates released a comprehensive 10-year plan to address housing affordability; child care advocates have articulated the economic, as well as child welfare, argument for $10/day daycare; B.C.’s Community Health Centres Association has a plan to deal with doctor shortages and hospital wait times; the taxpayers federation in B.C. has ideas on how the province can reduce debt.
These are perennial points of debate that go well beyond a four-week election campaign. But timing’s everything; it’s no coincidence these initiatives are being launched now when the public and our potential representatives are looking for a way forward.
And this is the part I find hard to be cynical about. When these organizations and their 10-year plans get coverage, the rest of us get exposure to new ideas and potentially better ways of doing things. I find this incredibly encouraging, because the focus is on solutions put forward by some people who have been toiling in their given sector, often for years.
Yes, elections are about winning and losing and sure there’s a lot of tired rhetoric, but we’d do well to keep our ears open to the surrounding conversations.
Voting is part of the process, but elections are also about taking stock and imagining new possibilities. We’re neglecting our responsibility when we do anything less.
