I'm a member of the Conservative Party of Canada. To me, it's the best choice. But I can't always toe the party line. Sometimes a person just has to speak up.

There is no hidden agenda. How do I know this? Because there is no agenda at all. The Conservative Party does not have a plan. They do not have a platform. And at this exact moment, I wonder if they even have a clue.

Next Sunday you will find members of Toronto's CPC in Young Dundas Square, at an anti-gun rally. I will not be there. I do not believe in banning guns - no matter how popular that idea may be in Toronto right now. I believe instead in banning criminals. I'm funny that way. But the aptly-named John Tory, Jim Flaherty, Peter Kent and others will be there. Walking hand in hand with members of the NDP, and handing out daisies, no doubt. They see it as an excellent PR move. Except for one small problem: The CPC isn't supposed to want to ban guns. If they did, they would have been thrown out of Calgary a long time ago.

I mentioned attending a Town Hall about safer streets in Toronto the other night, hosted by local conservative candidate Jurij Klufas, with Axel Kuhn and John Cappobianco. Jim Flaherty was there. Michael Mostyn was there. Eugene McDermid was there. Sam Goldstein of Trinity-Spadina (home of Olivia Chow) was there, and all but broke into a few bars of Give Peace a Chance. Five more minutes of listening to Sam tell us about how expensive it would be to have to build more jails, and how the cause of crime is poverty blah blah (did I mention Sam is a defence attorney??), and I wouldn't have been surprised if Al Sharpton had burst in trailing the Harlem Globetrotters and extolling the virtues of afterschool programs.

I like Sam. I really do. I like all the members of the Party that I've met so far, especially Steven Fletcher. That dude's awesome. But Toronto is a funny kind of place, and it breeds a funny kind of conservative. I think it's something in the water. I wonder if we could get the government to move us, en masse, out of the area, because the water obviously makes us insane. I hear there's an empty village up north we could use... but I digress.

Wishy-washy Toronto has created middle-of-the-road candidate mush like Sam, and like Axel who is staunchly conservative, except on issues of traditional family, immigration reform, gun control, etc etc.

Those who vote Liberal often do so apologetically, shrugging and saying "Well, they're all the same, aren't they?" I think I get it now. They are all the same, at least in Toronto. We have cultural groups here who do everything possible to stay out of the mainstream, but our political leaders and candidates do not use this same tactic themselves. They prefer to be one giant amalgamous pile of uselessness.

Is there no one in Toronto who will stand up and be noticed for being different? Or should I just go ahead and vote for the Liberals, because after all, they're all the same, aren't they?