What is old is new again. If Justin Trudeau had wanted to avoid winning elections on fear based politics he could have kept his promise to make this election based on a proportional vote, so each party received its fair share of the electorate’s intentions; but he didn’t. After gaining office, he discarded it and is now back with the 2015 winning formula: Vote for what you don’t want.

Tommy Douglas changed Canada with National Health Care. Something our neighbours to the south are still struggling to achieve.  Tommy didn’t get elected on what people feared but what people wanted.  We need to have the same confidence today to vote for what we want.

In this election, I’ve been telling people up and down the island: "Fear is a losing strategy.  Cape Breton and Canada will end up with a government we don’t want. Vote for the party that will ask the tough questions in Parliament." 

Questions like:  

• Why did Cape Breton receive $200,000 out of $12 million in Federal equalization payments to Nova Scotia? Without so much as a peep from the old parties.
• Why is P.E.I.’s population increasing but Cape Breton’s declining?
• Why are new economy jobs happening in P.E.I. and Green MLA’s being elected there but not in Nova Scotia?
• What is the logic behind sponsoring a moose cull in the National Park to protect the boreal forest there but allowing the rest of the highlands to be clear cut?
• What is the environmental and economic impact of that clear cut?        
• Why is there a sponsored federal moose cull in the Park but seals are allowed to dominate the Gulf’s ecosystem when the cod, their principal prey is on the edge of extinction in the Gulf?  Where is the logic here?
• What are we doing to protect the crab fishery from the threatened American consumer boycott?
• Everyone is concerned about Health Care, so why has the federal share of Health Care costs been permitted to decline?
• Why aren’t the tough questions being asked?

There are answers and there are solutions, but we can’t move towards them based on fear and avoidance of the tough questions.  A new, strong Green caucus with Elizabeth May can deliver them.  A return to one of the old parties will send the message to Ottawa that "while the world has changed, it’s politics as usual in Cape Breton".