An interesting night out...

Friday night a bunch of friends and I got together at a local tavern to celebrate my recent birthday.

At the table of my friends, among others, were a couple of strong NDP supporters. They also happen to be a married lesbian couple.

When they found out I am a strong CPC supporter and, in fact, had a Bruinooge sign on my lawn during this last campaign, one of them came over to talk politics with me.

One of the main issues they had with the CPC was this: "Harper and the Conservatives want to take away my marriage to that beautiful woman over there." Which left me speechless. Which is very difficult to do, by the way. I then spuuttered and pointed her to the CPC platform where it states plainly that any existing same-sex marriages would not be annulled or repealed if the same-sex marriage law were repealed. A grandfather clause, so to speak. The spectre of this legislation being reversed was brought up early in the campaign. And letting the cat out of the bag early, so to speak, seemed to work for the Conservatives. Why? Well, because conventional wisdom has it that if/when a bill to repeal the legislation now in place were to be introduced, it would be voted against and die on the table anyway. Thus, Harper could say that he did what he said he'd do, in allowing a free vote, thereby appeasing the social conservative side, and he'd also have same-sex marriage still there after the votes, appeasing those who fear the hidden agenda socon kitten killing homophobe insert fearmongering phrase here. Smart strategy.

Another issue they had with the CPC was the health care issue. It was admitted that, under Martin, wait times have become untenable. But she told me that she fears private delivery of public health care would result in all the best doctors going to private care, thereby leaving the publicly delivered part of the system in a lurch. Um, the problem lies with the slashes that were made to University programs in the first place. Or at least a big part of it. If you increase the capacity for Canadian Universities to graduate more medical prefessionals, you thereby make sure the system improves. Or at least doesn't get any worse. Just throwing more money at the situation (the Liberals' and NDP's plan of attack) would do nothing to solve the problem because the problem is already that physicians' time is already stretched to the max. More physicians is the answer.

We ended off our ideological discussion with agreeing that we definitely have different viewpoints, although I think I opened her eyes to the fact that she had been victim to a lot of the fearmongering and I hope I positively informed her about what the facts are, not what the scare tactics tried to say. In turn, she said she hopes I'm right about Harper having a moderate agenda and sticking to it.

I bet if the Conservatives deal with their moderate agenda, the 5 priorities that really seem to matter to all Canadians, the Conservatives may just have a couple of votes added to their tally next time.