I found a new site last week, with an excellent article on the upcoming Canadian election, and how everyone needs to get out and vote. The site is A Chick Named Marzi, and since she doesn't have trackback on her individual posts, I shall post her article entirely here. It's quite inspiring. My apologies for not blogging it sooner - it was written last week!

In less than half an hour, the polls will open down the street from my house and I'll be able to officially cast my early vote for the Conservative Party of Canada -- the first time ever in my life that I've voted Conservative. I'm casting my vote today because I have no clue where I'll be on the 28th: we'll be freshly arrived in Toronto from Montreal and I don't want to run the risk of *not* being able to vote in Ontario.

In this blog, I've been a little schizophrenic about my Conservative vote. To be honest, when Paul Martin first called the election, I was going to vote Conservative *only* because (a) I refused to vote Liberal or NDP and (b) the alternative -- not voting at all in some pathetic and pointless act of personal protest -- was never an option for me. I could never justify *not* voting and then complaining at length about the state the country is in. No way. No how.

But as I started getting into the politics and started reading more and more on the Conservatives, a strange thing happened: I started to get -- dare I say it? -- enthusiastic! For the first time ever, I was genuinely excited about voting. In all honesty, this has very little to do with my newfound political conservatism. Yes, I would still vote Conservative but my heart wouldn't be in it. Without the enthusiasm, my Conservative vote would be a knee-jerk reaction against the Liberal Party, just as when I voted Liberal all those years ago, it had less to do with having confidence in the Liberals and far more to do with wanting Mulroney out of office at any cost.

Nope. I'm going to cast my vote today with a cautious optimism about what Stephen Harper can accomplish -- and as reserved as that sounds, it's still the most enthusiasm I've felt for Canadian politics in ages.

I'm tired of the status quo. I'm tired of the endless posturing about health care and the lies about our wonderful health care system. I'm sick of the endless catering to the separatists of Quebec. I'm sick of the raging centralization of Canadian government. I'm sick of ridiculously high taxes being used to pay for a lot of shit that, quite honestly, I don't even believe in. I'm sick of the self-indulgent anti-Americanism that has become more and more pervasive in Canada. I'm sick of a government that thinks that sitting firmly on the middle of the fence is the best way *to* govern. I'm sick of the illusion of moral superiority that the Liberal government has fostered. I'm sick of a *LOT* of things -- and that, my dears, is why I have chosen to cast my vote for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.

I don't believe in the lies of the Liberal Party anymore, and I think Layton's vision of Canadians driving around in little green cars powered by cow dung under the comforting shadow of the United Nations is a horribly misguided pipe dream. The Bloc? They're not even an option -- and not because I don't believe Quebec should separate, but because I don't believe it should separate the way the Bloc and Parti-Quebecois *say* it should -- like a whiny teenager who gets his own apartment but still goes to Mom and Dad's house to eat, wash his clothes, use the hot water and run up a long-distance phone bill.

So Conservative it is. I don't see Canada changing overnight because of the Conservative presence in the House of Commons, but I do finally feel that there will be someone in the House who actually speaks *for* me on many important issues. Harper is a milquetoast, but I have hope that he'll bare his teeth and stand up for those Canadians, like myself, who feel that the positions of the Canadian government have been as foreign and alien to their political beliefs and personal values as, say, China's would be.

I'm ready for change. I'm not expecting it overnight, but dagnabbit if I'm not going to cast my vote today with a little bounce in my step ;)