A Proposal for Cleaner Elections

Do you remember when federal election campaigns used to be interesting? Do you remember back when leaders barnstormed across Canada, rolling like a wave across the country, making stump-speech after stump-speech in all the small towns they happened to pass along the way? Do you remember a time when federal party leaders weren't omnipresent; when they didn't seem to be in every community at the same time?

Of course you don't - unless you're surfing the web from the computer lab at Baycrest, you're far too young to really remember any of that. Two inventions in the 20th century - the television and the airplane - changed the way we campaign. The former brings the pictures home to us; if a leader says something exciting, we can watch it on the nightly (or even live) news, regardless of if he spoke in Toronto or Tuktoyaktuk. The latter has allowed the leader to make announcements from both conurbations in the same day.

While there's nothing we can - or should - do about the role of television in an election campaign, the same cannot be said of airplanes.

There is something lost in the awe owed to our country by anybody seeking to run her when a politician can dip their foot in the waters of all three coasts in a single day. There is something missing from the epic-ness of the quest to head the government when one gives up on seeing the country in its geographical order. There is something lacking from the sense of purpose when appearing in our remotest territories to give a speech is more a result of asking the pilot to turn right than a four day trek to be there.

When a leader can, in the closing days of a campaign, personally shore up support in both Vancouver Island and Bonavista, any sense of regional imperative goes right out the window. Add to this the massive amounts of polution caused by frequent air-travel, and we have to wonder why we let our politicians get away with it.

A proposal then: Ban party leaders and their entourages from the skys. The media will still be allowed their chartered jets of course - they're on company business, not national dreams. Let the leaders travel across Canada in campaign trains, and busses to take them where the trains cannot. If they are in Willowdale and later want to make a visit to Vancouver, let them travel to Sudbury, and Thunder Bay, and Winnipeg, and Saskatoon, and Calgary first. Given them a sense of place, a sense of purpose. Force them to plan sweeps of the country to take it all in - not just the electoral hotspots.

It will be a tough change at first; we're all used to convinience. But both the environment, and the electorate, will be grateful in the end.