As You Might Have Heard...

...or seen, our esteemed CBC has decided to help us all by posting a "compass" to help us realize we are all really Liberals, after all, and should vote Liberal in the upcoming election.

"The Compass" had 30 statements representing positions on various supposedly hot button issues that may define whether you lean toward the Conservative Party or the left-of-centre parties, especially, the Liberal Party. You could select various options under each statement ranging from "Strongly Agree" to "Strongly Disagree", in other words, the standard Likert Scale.  Some had a variation on the Strongly Agree-Strongly Disagree polarity - namely "Much More" to "Much Less", but, still a standard Likert Scale arrangement.

The questions were grouped according to these themes:

Defence
Economy
Environment
Government Programs
Immigration
Law and Order
Moral Values
Parliamentary Reform
Quebec
Taxes

The statements given under each heading supposedly represented a position more typical of one or more of the political parties than others. For example, statements such as the following were given:

"Environmental damage caused by the Alberta oil sands industry is exaggerated"

and

"The government should fund daycare instead of giving money directly to parents"

In some cases the statement was presented as a question:

"How much should be done to accommodate religious minorities in Canada?"

"How much of a role should the private sector have in health care?"

The trouble with these kinds of questions is they rarely represent a clear, simple expression of belief, as most people's views are more nuanced or complex. Over the next two weeks, up until election day, and in the interests of correcting that problem, I would like to present a series of my own statements, under each of the same headings and perhaps one or two that they missed, which I think are more representative of Con-speak (at least they more accurately reflect my beliefs), while at the same time lampooning Lib-speak, Dipper-speak, Bloc-head speak and Green-speak.

So, to begin, here are some statements which I feel more accurately reflect my position, but I don't claim to speak for all Conservative Party supporters. Unless otherwise indicated, I "Strongly Agree" with each of these statements:

Defense:

1. Successive Liberal governments have decimated our once proud military
2. We should assign an appropriate level of resources to rebuild our military forces so we can again punch at or above our weight on the international stage
3. To accomplish this we should dismantle several key Liberal Party institutions and beliefs that have taken on the mantle of sacred cows, such as:

• Our military forces should be used for peacekeeping missions and civilian emergencies (such as floods) only, unless...

• Their deployment has been sanctioned by the United Nations

Economy:

1. To increase productivity and roll back the overweening power of unions, labour legislation needs to be amended. Among other things, the right of the individual to not join a union in the workplace must be asserted
2. Companies should not be forced to implement costly environmental practices and technologies where the harm of not doing so has not been proven (such as the impact of industry produced CO2 on climate change)
3. Inter-provincial and international trade barriers should be eliminated wherever possible
4. Unfair advantages/disadvantages created by marketing boards need to be eliminated by dismantling said boards and leaving the individual entrepreneur the right to sell his product or service to whomever he wishes

Tomorrow: Government Programs and Taxes