Commentary

Time to force the issue

March 6, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

As early as the beginning of the 1900s there were suggestions that compulsory voting in Australia be made law. Not quite there for another 20 years or so, compulsory voting was finally passed into law in Australia in 1924.

I think it is time Canada did the same thing.

It is a puzzle to me how it has come to pass that two elections in a row have seen this province’s voters care so little for the right to vote that less than half of them did so. There are no excuses. In this last election, there were people driving around to the homes of individuals who asked for the service to collect their votes right there in their own homes, free of charge and very nice they were about it too.

Why do we bother blowing millions of dollars away on elections if so few of us bother to participate? There were so many calls – be sure you vote – so many appeals to our sense of responsibility – something – anything to bring an election that made a difference.

Last election in 2022, I blamed the leaders of the opposing parties on the party in power, that their ridiculous behaviour of battling between themselves drove voters away, but actually, that was no defence for the majority who did not vote. The behaviour of Horwath and Del Duca was infantile and inexcusable but it did not actually excuse the more than 60 per cent who did not vote then either.

There are many other theories about the structure of how we vote here in Canada but that is to one side for this moment. That we are not obliged by the laws of our own land to vote – that is what matters right now. No matter how we jig the rules, the formulas, none of it will matter if so few bother to vote at all. 

Voting online might encourage a few more to join in but online is so very fragile, with virtually no security and no way to ever guarantee security.

So, at the risk of more fools in trucks coming to shut down a whole city again, I think we should open the conversation about compulsory voting here. After all, the Australians can be a stroppy lot, pretty quick to defend what they might see as a constriction on their personal rights but they are alright with being obliged by their own laws to vote.

We have volunteered to give up all our privacy – every “smart” device in our homes, in our cars, listens to us, watches our money, how much we drink or sleep; how far we drive and where and why we are going to wherever we are going. A growing number of countries and areas in countries have CCTV watching – and many with face recognition – everyone everywhere.

So, to give up one of the only private moments of your life – your own say-so about who is being paid with your dollars while they also dictate: Are you are paying attention to who is going to come and dig your backyard, how much it is going to cost you to live, who can hold any power at all over you? If we do not pay more attention to who is in charge, we can so easily lose that power.

It is true that I grieve for the harm that will definitely come to Ontario with the crowd that is in charge now – the digging and devastation of precious land right here in our backyard unless the doubling of protests and truth about the planned construction can stop it. That and so many promises more.

If 90 per cent of Ontario had voted, how different would the promises be now?

Candidates wanting to run for office and, especially as party leaders ought to take public speaking lessons. They should learn how to behave in a public forum and do mock debates with professional trainers, even those who are also directors of plays.

The whole business is theatre. It is all about appearances, body language, who is cool and looking in charge; which debater says less and then says it better. The problems are the lies and pretenses; the previous disappointments and the breaking of trust.

Disillusion sets in and people answer my questions, pointing their fingers at the villains or, worse, the clearly naive with grand ideas and no clear plans for their fruition.

And those people who didn’t vote shake their heads and just shrug.

We ought to bring in compulsory voting.

We ought to actually educate our children on the environment, history, critical thinking, music and the arts, great literature, farming, how to handle money and technology, the law, ethics, heat pumps.

The world’s largest iceberg is in Antarctic and is stuck on a “shelf.” As it is melting, its diminishment will affect the rest of the world’s weather adversely. We are so tough, so advanced, and so reckless with our environment that we are melting the world’s largest iceberg, consequences of which have yet been measured. 

Meanwhile, BP, the oil company is scaling back its green initiatives because investors are complaining about the lowering dividends.

And we are still not serious about doing anything that matters.

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