On the way in this morning, Son One and I were listening to a CBC Radio reporter I really like. At one point, he talked about Ontario being “plunged into an election.”
“Plunging,” I suggested to my boy, is a clear pejorative. And it’s a case of letting language do our thinking for us.
Here’s the thing: despite occasional evidence to the contrary, we live in a democracy. And, in Ontario in particular, we live in a democracy where there is a minority government.
Having elections is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is what happens in democracies, thank God.
In a minority situation, the most you can ever hope to survive is a couple years. We’re getting pretty close to that now.
So, if an election happens – and I honestly, truly cannot tell if Andrea Horwath’s team will opt for one (they seem to want one, but simultaneously fear one) – we haven’t been “plunged” into an election. We’ll have been given an opportunity, as a people, to choose change or something else. And the Ontario NDP will deserve not a moment’s criticism for choosing to have an election.
Words are important. Elections, in democracies, are too.
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