Election Integrity Matters in a Democracy

I lay out some of my thoughts on Election Integrity and the consequences of a Country not believing that they have had free and fair elections. 

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All right, and we're back Russell here with the Canadian conservative, the Canadian conservative.substack.com. And today I want to talk a little bit about election interference and what that means for democracy. So if you're not from Canada, or perhaps you haven't really been keeping up right now, from what I understand, I've been watching a whole bunch of stuff on this is that basically, CSIS which is Canada's spy agency has leaked out Edward Snowden style a bit to the media that a sitting member of Parliament may have been compromised by China. Now they claim that they briefed the prime minister's office Prime Minister initially claimed that he wasn't briefed on he had no idea. Things aren't quite adding up in that sphere right now. And they basically say they warned, they were ignored. And then eventually, someone decided to actually leak what's going on to the press. Now, what's really sad is our government Canada is known for its very poor whistleblower laws, has decided that it's going to launch a full scale investigation to find out who did the leaking. But more and more calls are coming out from government that there needs to be a public inquiry, Prime Minister is not committed to a public inquiry, his committee members for foreign interference have actually filibustered. Now they're refusing to even show up. So the committee can even fill a quorum right now to sit for the very concerning things in a democratic society in a society that claims to value rule of law, and we have to remember is that us regular people, we have to follow the law, we have to be transparent in our workplaces and open, or we could be in big trouble. But this doesn't look good them, the more they hold out on just doing the public inquiry, it's just gonna look worse and worse, and it's gonna really, really start to piss people off. Now, what they're saying is that a public inquiry is going to result in revealing too much about our intelligence, intelligence gathering methods and information, look, anything that they can make public, they should make public as quickly as possible, they should be doing a full investigation information that cannot be directly shared with Canadian public, they should be forming a just to provide to the Canadian public that gives a rundown without any compromising information being put in there. It's not uncommon for government agencies to do a Ges of information for inquiries, and for a tips and all sorts of different things. So this is no exception. I understand it is top secret stuff, super secret spy stuff, I get it. But that means that they just need to be that much more careful about the information they include in the gist. However, just because something is labeled as secret or top secret, does not mean that it cannot be ever viewed by the public. But I think what we really need to ask ourselves right now, is our government legitimate? We have to ask that if we're not going to have a public inquiry, if the Prime Minister's committed to doing a, what they call a special repertoire. So basically, like an investigator that investigates on behalf of the prime minister, and then reports back to the Prime Minister's office, so we investigate ourselves, and we found that we didn't do anything wrong. And why the question is, are government legitimate? Well, if people don't believe that the government is legitimate, if they don't believe that their vote actually counted, and the candidate that got the most votes got elected, then they don't actually believe in democracy anymore. They can't believe in the system. If they don't believe in the system, because the system is rigged. Then do we really have a government? Do we really have a democracy anymore? It's been really, really sad to see that the usual cheerleaders for the prime minister's office have been saying it's a nothing burger. The Conservatives are just chasing a nothing burger on this. What's really disappointed is that Jagmeet Singh refuses to hold a no confidence vote on this. So the liberals in their flying monkeys are definitely working overtime to cover their base on this, when in reality, they could just get ahead of it. And I don't care. Go back to the 2015 election go back to the election before that. The only way that we remain a country is that Have people believe in the country, if people believe in the democracy and the rule of law, they actually believe that everything that's been done has been above board. If people honestly don't believe in their country, if they think that they've been faked out, then they're going to act accordingly. They're going to get upset, and then they're going to make their voices heard in ways that aren't good. Now, I'm not encouraging that in any way, shape, or form. It's just reality. We have to face that reality. If someone truly believes truly, I'm not talking, they're just saying it or they're BS saying or grifting. But if they truly believe that their government is illegitimate, then they don't believe they actually have to follow any of the laws or the rules. Because why would you follow the laws or rules of a government's illegitimate? You wouldn't. So it's definitely a scary time. And I'll tell you this, we have been sitting on not enacting a foreign agent registry. We have kept ourselves in a very precarious situation for far too long. One of my detractors on Twitter was saying, well, Pierre has been in parliament for 19 years, he could have done something. And I said, Absolutely, he could have 100%, not disagreeing. But here's the thing, we have a leak in our election system, we need to plug that and then we can go throw someone under the bus afterwards, if that's what we really want to do as a country. But until then, our priority needs to be fixing this leak in our electoral system, it needs to be fixed. And the longer it goes unfixed, the more upset people are going to get. And then we're like I said, we're gonna run into some real big trouble, actual problems. And I'm talking January 6 style stuff. And I'm not passing any judgment. I'm not American. I've read a bunch of stuff on January 6, but this is the Canadian conservative podcast, not the American Republican show. So not gonna get into debate on January 6, but there was people that were angry about the results of the election, they honestly did not believe that the election was valid, and some of them still don't. And, frankly, our country's already in a pretty precarious situation. We don't need to add to it right now. I'll make you this promise, though. Any party that makes it a solid part of their platform, that they will steal, man, our electoral system, from foreign interference from corporate voting methods that may or may not be compromised. That keeps our democracy as free and fair as it can be as an under first past the post, they'll get my vote. It doesn't matter which party because at the end of the day, having our elections, free and fair elections, that comes before everything else, because again, if our elections are compromised, then it leads to all sorts of trouble that we really don't want. If that was what the Green Party was saying. And they were gonna go through with it. I mean, that sounds crazy. I know. But at the end of the day, we, if we don't have those checks and balances in place, then nothing matters. Not voting doesn't matter, then the government doesn't matter and things don't matter. And once we start to lose that, everything starts to fall apart. Anyways, that's kind of my thoughts right now. It'll be interesting to see what happens the next few days next few weeks. I think that the Conservative Party needs to just hammer this home, they just need to go after this. 100% ignore everything else the Liberals are going to try to throw at them. This needs to be their one single focus every committee everything they do needs to be focused on this. Because again, Conservative Party PPC, any party that's more right leaning. It all doesn't matter if people don't actually believe in our democratic process. That's all I got. Russell from the Canadian conservative. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time,