Throw, throw, throw your vote...

My good friend Jen just wrote an entry that shows I'm not the only one wondering which way to vote. Actually, I knew that before: polls show 49% of people could change their minds before election day, which strikes me as a *very* high number.
Elections are about the future of the country. That's probably, in a nutshell, why so many young people don't vote: the future, to most teens, is an abstract concept at best. I've always had a well-developed sense of consequence, driven into me by my mother when I was very young ("don't climb that tree, you'll fall out and break your neck!") and it's not hard to imagine a mother-voice chastising me even now: "Don't vote NDP, you'll bankrupt the country, they think money grows on trees, how could you even *think* of voting for them, we raised you better than that, go to your room!" Okay, she never *said* that, but she could have.
Until I was a teenager and a Reform Party sign went up on our lawn, I'd had no clue as to how my parents voted. In hindsight, of course, it's obvious: a more Leave-It-To-Beaver couple *might* exist, but it's hard to imagine. (My stepfather actually *dragged me out* of a showing of a PG movie once because he was so offended.)
I've always voted Reform/Alliance ("and the sins of the mother were visited upon the child") without much thought to their social policies. My reason for voting Reform was knee-jerk: I absolutely *despised* Jean Chretien. (And yes, I always have supported large planks of the Reform/Alliance platform, with its fiscal prudence and emphasis on law and order.) Of course, as we all know, the existence of two right-wing alternatives to the Liberals split the vote three elections running, and Chretien lingered like a bad fart, a real couch-scorcher.
Now there's finally one clear-cut alternative and I'm hesitating to endorse it. Try a little irony, it's good for your blood.
Health care seems to be the biggest issue this time out. People recognize that our health care system is creaking ominously underfoot, but so far the only solution the parties have (ALL of them!) is to prop it up with billion-dollar bills.
It's the kiss of death in Canadian politics to even muse aloud about two-tier health care. Even to say something as innocent (and accurate!) as 'you know, folks, thirty percent of our health care system is *already* private"...well, you've just touched the political third rail and you're going to jitterbug all the way to oblivion.
What I find truly disturbing are these champions of public health care like our Premier, Dalton "Pants Ablaze" McGuinty. He's delisted services like eye exams, chiropractic, and physiotherapy from our public health insurance. Which means he's privatized them--you now have to pay out of your own pocket. But if you want an MRI, you can't pay to jump the queue...that'd be two-tier medicine!
I'm still waiting for a truly innovative approach to health care, one that doesn't involve hospital administrators making $400K a year. I don't see one in this election.
Anyway, I've digressed. This is a great country we live in. I am all for most of the 'Canadian values' that Paul Martin is always going on about. I don't hate Americans, like some of Chretien's cabinet openly did, but I place a high value on the fact I'm not a Yank. It's my Canadian pride that's making it hard to decide on a party to vote for...we've had eleven years of catastrophic government and it's time to reverse it. But how?