As an election gets underway, I'm leaving the country

Well, at least for the first half of the campaign. I will be going on a long-planned trip to Mexico and Texas, each for a week, and will be back in Canada on September 28. Just in time to witness the last 16 days of the election campaign before Canadians vote on October 14th.

I can't say that I'm too excited about the upcoming campaign. Conservatives have way more money, Stephane Dion has so far been unable to really connect with Canadians and the corporate media will be busy fawning over the latest poll instead of doing any real reporting on policy issues that matter to Canadians.

As a staunch Liberal, I am not looking forward to the endless leaks and self-inflicted wounds that we are likely to see during this campaign. It has been happening to varying degrees since Dion won the leadership. I really do hope I'm wrong, but if the recent past is any indication, we will see a parade of unidentified highly placed liberals talking off-the-record second-guessing and undermining Dion. Frankly, there are just too many people within the Liberal party that will benefit from a Dion loss in this election. It's sad but true.

On the brighter side,

• The expectations for Dion are so low that he is bound to surpass them and I hope he will surprise all of us with his performance
  
• Maybe the wave of "Change" in the US will have some impact in Canada. One can hope, right?
• I hope that Canadians take the time to find out what the Conservatives actually plan to do with a majority government. What's on their agenda? Other than bashing the Liberals, of course?

I will try to blog as much as I can. I will avoid discussing the polls and rather focus on the differing policy platforms of each party. In truth, I'm quite distracted with the Toronto International Film Festival so there will likely be a bunch of posts about the various movies that I will be seeing in the next week.

~BT