who you plan to vote for (party, candidate)

Last Thursday when I was told we were going to see a debate about the election parties I was quite curious. Due to the fact, I never paid too much attention to politics because from what I heard almost every election was how bad a party had done; we should vote for "this" party for whatever reason. I was interested on how the debate would be like. During the debate of the parties I observed all the candidates very carefully and took notes on each one.

In my opinion, I believe the debate was mostly focused on the NDP and Liberals. I observed how both candidates coped with directed counters and questions.  I believe all parties did a fairly good job answering and countering questions, but through my observation I noticed that Avtar Bains, NDP representative never went over time. Although he always started to get into answering the question directed at him, he always cut himself off and not finishing his statement. This showed he was still unexperianced, and didn’t mange his time wisely.

On the other hand I found that the Amrik Virk, Liberals representative always found a way to avoid answering the question, making his public speech look a lot more professional than the other parties. 

Due to the fact that the debate was so focused on the NDP and Liberals it seemed the Barry Sikora of the conservatives never really answered the questions either, he gave off the attitude that he really didn't care if he won or not. His public speaking skills were not in comparison to liberals either, therefore he just made his public appeal of himself and the conservative’s party worse to the audience.

Alternatively, Sukhi Gill of BC visions gave really good direct answers but because of her accent it made it seem that she hard poor English skills. (***) spoke for her basically the entire time. His examples like growing a garden for cancer were totally irrelevant to the questions. Although it seemed he was trying to get a message out through his examples, it wasn't represented well therefore making his public speaking skills appeal weak to other parties. I’ve also seen that the BC visions tried to counter the other parties but all parties literally made fun of them. When BC visions tried to counter the conservatives, Barry Sikora just said "I don't even know what the BC visions just said, but going back to the question just asked...." the statement just made the BC visions look like they didn't have a chance of winning. As a matter of fact this statement made the conservatives look even worse.

The debate was very interesting and I learned a lot from it. I analyzed the notes and came to a conclusion. I decided to vote for the NDP. I believe that the NDP would do a better job than the Liberals.  My main reason why I voted for the NDP was because I wasn't in favor of the pipeline. I don't want to ruin BC's beautiful landscape and especially the environment. Although this doesn’t mean I voted for the NDP just for the issue of the pipeline. I had taken the quiz on CBC vote campus, the results showed that I related to the NDP and Green party much more than any of the other parties. In fact I do agree with the many of the issues the NDP were interested to help and solve. For instance the overcrowding classrooms, the pipeline and the child poverty rate of BC.

Indeed all issues mentioned by all parties are major problems that should be solved immediately but because the pipeline issue is a much larger problem to me, I choose to focus a lot more on the pipeline. I go to places in Vancouver, such Granville Island and Stanley Park occasionally and I believe it’s just so beautiful every time I go. To think that a pipeline can destroy the beautiful environment there is very heart breaking. Newspapers such the Vancouver Sun and many blogs on the internet such Rafe Mair online discussed many problems with the pipeline. I do agree with the Liberals that BC needs much more job opportunities for the people but the pipeline is just too dangerous! By creating the pipeline, we destroy so much of the environment of BC. The oil going through the pipeline can easily leak into the Burrard inlet and wipe the ecosystem there entirely. As we all know to recover from disasters takes a tremendous amount of time. According to one of the Vancouver sun articles it takes 40 Billion dollars to clean up an oil spill. The business such as tourism and fishing all go down. The money to fix the problem won’t ever disappear into thin air but would be added to Canada’s current debt.

Overall I researched many blogs, newspapers, and took many quizzes to decide on whom exactly should I vote for.  Throughout the researching I have learned many new concepts of politics and many of the ongoing issues of BC. I observed the actions of the candidates and re-analyzed what they gave as answers. On May.10 I came to a conclusion and voted for the NDP.