For rather than against

I have been posting a lot of stuff about why people shouldn't vote for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.  As was pointed out to me last week though, I should probably put some effort into explaining why you should vote for my favourite option, the NDP / Thomas Mulcair.

Our current system of voting is awful.  First past the post encourages strategic voting instead of people voting for what they truly want and means that success is more about having a party that has no competition in their political area than having a party the populace wants.  It should *not* be a crippling disadvantage to have multiple parties representing similar viewpoints!  The NDP is going to bring in proportional representation, which is one of the best voting systems.  There are other systems that are also fine, and although personally I would go for random ballot I think proportional representation is a great improvement over what we have.

The war on drugs is wasteful, pointless, and destructive.  The NDP is planning to pursue a strategy of decriminalizing and regulation of currently illegal drugs.  I personally don't think that the government should be stepping in to stop adults from taking recreational drugs at all and I am confident that legalizing them would bring great benefits.  However, that won't happen overnight and dialing back our terrible drug strategy towards an end goal of regulating drugs similarly to how we regulate alcohol and tobacco products now is important.

Repealing Bill C-51 is key to restoring some of our key freedoms, and the NDP will do that.  C-51 was passed in a haze of nationalism and misplaced fear of terrorism and it takes away privacy and due process from Canadians to fight a mythical foe.  We wouldn't give up our freedoms to fight television sets that tip over by accident or moose wandering onto the road, and both of those are an order of magnitude more threatening than terrorism.  C-51 needs to die, and the NDP will do that.

Canada is 95% immigrants, and our country is doing well.  There is every reason to think both from this obvious statement and every bit of research that has been conducted about immigration to developed nations that bringing in refugees and immigrants makes Canada stronger.  New people to our country tend to work hard and do so at the most difficult and brutal jobs.  They didn't cross half of the world because they were lazy and looking to sit around - the types of people that make that transition are by and large people who want something better and will bust their asses to make it happen.  The NDP is going to bring in more refugees from Syria which is both good from a humanitarian and growth standpoint, and they will also make it easier for us to accept more immigrants from all corners of the world.

Thomas Mulcair and the NDP have a plan to lower spending on pointless, sometimes counterproductive things like the drug war and the military and direct that spending to things like daycare and health.  They want to stop the racist terrorism fearmongering and the policies it has spawned that take away our freedoms and work to make Canada worse off.  The Canada I want to live in is one that gives people great freedom of expression, religion, and consumption, welcomes people of all types into our borders (which helps the people that are already here!) and makes sure that our voting system brings in the leaders that the people want.  The NDP want that Canada too, so you should vote for them to give them the chance to make that happen.