Conservative wins in boring Yellowhead Byelection

Conservative, Jim Eglinski, cruised to a victory on the votes of 10% of the eligible electors in the large riding of Yellowhead. The election results show only 16% of eligible voters thought it was important enough to cast a ballot. In this election one looking at it one can't really blame the other 84% that stayed home to surf the web or whatever. It is up to all candidates in an election to show us why they deserve support and to get that support to the polls.

By all appearances here in Grande Cache there really was no campaign. There were no forums to give candidates a chance to layout their respective platforms. In the last week leading up to election day we saw the appearance of a couple campaign ads in our local paper. One from the winner and the other from the Liberal candidate. Apparently most candidates had few resources and no concerted election campaign. In the campaign a Libertarian, NDP, Liberal and an independent ran in addition to the Conservative.

A feel good story this week, in the local paper, (Grande Cache Mountaineer) showing the love affair between federal conservatives and the chamber of commerce tells us the conservative candidate did make it up here to talk to a handful of, I suppose, supporters. Nothing in the story tells us what our new MP would like to accomplish or what he or his government is going to do for the citizens of Grande Cache or the country for that matter but we do see that he is worthy of support because the outgoing Conservative MP, Rob Merrifield, who nominated him says so. That should be good enough for us. We really don't want the benefit of a Northern living subsidy do we?

Well guess it is back to business as usual for Harper's government.