Uniting Against Conservatives, and a call to prayer
The Liberal leads in many ridings in the election tomorrow are quite thin. For example, in the Greater Toronto area, the Liberal party has just a 3% lead over the Conservatives in both York-Center and Oakville-East.
As a former NDP donor and supporter (who is still ideologically an NDPer, and might return to the NDP if there is a significant leadership change), I’m calling on all Canadians, including NDP voters, to vote strategically, and if necessary, lend your support to the Liberal Party. Please see votewell.ca or smartvoting.ca. If there’s a closely-contested riding near you, please please volunteer for the Liberals.
Yes, the Liberals are centrists, and that’s not great, but there are more important things at stake here.
The Liberal Party is a centrist party (or perhaps center-right — one example being the tax hike on >$250k in cap gains being dropped). But, now isn’t the time for division. There are many ridings which are currently projected to be taken by the Cons because the non-Conservative vote is sadly split between the NDP, Liberals, and Greens.
Pierre Poilievre is a shameless, compulsive liar. It is a surprise whenever he speaks the truth. His speeches are an incessant stream of lies. He and his Cons also voted against several social programs, which the NDP and Liberals worked together to enact — including dental care, pharma care, $10/day child care, the Canada child benefit, the Housing Accelerator Fund (to fight NIMBYism and get more houses built), among many other things.
Real harm would come to people if the Cons are allowed to eke out a win due to voter complacency, or the NDP-Liberal split.
It would be a shame and a disgrace to have such a gigantic liar like Pierre become the leader of Canada, just like how much shame Trump’s second presidency has brought to conscientious Americans.
We cannot let lying Pierre and his Cons win this election.
We (Liberals, NDPers, and Greens) need to unite against the Cons.
Please go out and volunteer! It’s important for the future of our country.
Call to prayer
The evacuation of Dunkrik was one of the miracles of World War 2. It saved the lives of over three hundred thousand soldiers. One less-well-known aspect of the story was that there was a national day of prayer preceding it:
During the darkest hours of World War II, King George VI called for a national day of prayer and churches across Great Britain were filled with people. […]
“We must pray,” King George VI said. “This next Sunday, I’m calling for a national day of prayer.”
Famously nonreligious, Churchill was surely not looking at prayer as the answer. But he could hardly refuse the king. On May 24, King George VI addressed the nation: “Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it.”
On May 26, at Westminster Abbey, the Archbishop of Canterbury called on God to protect the troops. Across Great Britain, tens of thousands of people responded to the king’s call, uniting as never before. Cathedrals and churches, mosques and synagogues were packed to overflowing. At Westminster Cathedral, the line extended for blocks and hundreds kept vigil outside. The people didn’t know exactly why they were praying, yet they prayed even so. “Nothing like this has ever happened before” was how one English newspaper described the scene.
This is a big deal (feel free to look at link A or link B on this).
There is immense power in prayer.
We need to pray.
I’d personally say we need to pray against the Cons/liars winning, but to quote my friend Dan:
I’ll be honest, praying ‘against’ the conservative party doesn’t really sit well with me either. I don’t want them to win and I do see them as a threat, but I’m more aligned with praying for wisdom for our leaders, truth to shine through the lies, wisdom, urgency and enthusiasm for the voting public. Several elections have been won by apathy (failure to vote) and that needs to change. Canadians need to feel like their vote and their voice matters.
I’ll admit that, sure, God sometimes allows evil people to win (e.g., Hitler), but that doesn’t mean that we should give up and stop praying. If we can lessen the evil in this world, let’s do everything to that end, including submitting our prayers and petitions to God.
A note on why I stopped supporting the NDP
My donations to the federal parties are public record — and can be looked up on Elections Canada (you’ll see it if you search my name, under the contributor field, under Advanced Search Criteria). I wholeheartedly supported the NDP until December 2024, with most of my donations going to the NDP. This is verifiable public information.
But in December 2024, the NDP leader bizarrely and inexplicably said he was going to call an early election, when the Cons were polling sky high. I wrote about my confusion about this in my piece What was the federal NDP thinking?. It made no sense to me. Jagmeet risked throwing all NDP gains made under the SACA (Supply and Confidence Agreement) — including dental care, pharma care, etc.
Maybe his life was being threatened. Conservatives love to make death threats. I and some of my friends have been on the receiving end of this. Including an American friend of mine who made a mildly anti-Trump post on Facebook calling on Christians to be true to the Bible — for which he received death threats. I imagine that Jagmeet Singh didn’t feel safe for himself or his family under a barrage of conservative death threats.
I’ve usually donated 75% to 80% to the NDP, and 20%-25% to the Liberals. Since I make most of my donations to political parties on December 31st each year, I switched my support to the Liberal Party at the end of Dec 2024 (i.e., before Trudeau’s resignation). It just didn’t make sense to support the NDP anymore, since its leader seemed to have lost his mind. Perhaps he put a desire to become Opposition Leader over the needs of the people.
But regardless of all of that, all of us non-conservatives need to unite now.
We need to throw our support behind the Liberal Party.
We need to pray and stop lying Pierre and his Cons.
On a lighter note, here’s a satirical version of the NDP leader’s letter which caused me to switch to the Liberal Party:
It doesn’t make sense to support the NDP anymore, at least under its current leadership. Let’s unite against the Conservatives, and pray in agreement that they are defeated.
