Commentary, Opinion

Waiting in silence

November 12, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The 2026 municipal elections are now history, and thanks to just over 30 per cent of you, a new council has been elected to lead the direction of the town for the next four years.

I will assume the other 70 per cent who couldn’t be bothered to employ the energy it takes to use their index finger to click on a mouse button to vote from home will dutifully not complain about town functions over the coming few years.

Sorry, you had your chance.

While you were sitting in the easy chair watching reruns of Married With Children, 30 per cent of the population did your job and duty for you.

There are too many people who say “voting doesn’t matter.”

Well, it does.

Picture this: You’re on a bus with nine other people and a driver. The bus is going down a steep hill at high speed, and the road ends at a 1,000-foot cliff.

The driver yells, “It’s up to you! Do I hit the brakes or not? You better vote on it!”

Two people vote ‘yes.’ Three people vote ‘no.’ Five people do not vote.

Majority wins, and you’re all going over the cliff at the same time.

I’ll bet during that drop, you start re-thinking about hiding in the back of the bus and not voting.

Democracy has its failings, but it is still the best form of government for a civilized Western society.

The idea that every citizen of a certain age gets to vote is still a relatively new concept. While the idea of democracy has been around for well over 2,000 years, it didn’t always include everyone in the vote.

Most democracies only allowed certain people to vote. Usually, people of a certain rank or landowners were the only ones allowed to participate in the process.

In Canada, women did not have the right to vote until 1918. Suffragists worked hard to secure the vote for women in this country.

I don’t understand how any modern woman doesn’t respect the work their great-grandmothers did to get the vote, and follow through with that by voting in every election.

There is one inherent flaw in a democracy. If a vote is carried by 51 per cent, that means 49 per cent of voters won’t achieve the goals they want.  Depending on the government, those 49 per cent may be very dissatisfied with what the government is doing.

However, it is important to remember that elected officials are obligated to represent all of the people in their riding — not just the ones that voted for them.

Judging the mood of a country’s citizens can be difficult. The national media can no longer be counted on to just deliver the news.

You don’t have to be an expert on politics to read a newspaper daily and see the biased slant that has developed in several of the national papers and broadcast journalism.

Thanks to social media, you can still follow the general mood of the population and the trending thoughts of a lot of people.

For some reason, people are a lot more emboldened when speaking their opinion when they can express that opinion from behind the anonymity of a computer keyboard.

Although not everyone hides, many people are quite vocal on social media about their opinions and aren’t shy about expressing them.

There is a sizable portion of citizens in this country who are not satisfied with the federal government’s policies. They are being more vocal, and in many cases, more organized.

People who don’t like that opposition, including national media sources, always respond the same way — they start using names and buzzwords that have nothing to do with the issues or the group that is not happy.

If you walk into a department store, point at a woman and yell “Thief! Thief! She stole something!”

Everyone standing nearby will look at the woman and assume she’s a thief.

Many groups are just fed up with the federal government’s approach to domestic and foreign affairs.

They give away hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign countries and organizations while doing little or nothing to support our own citizens who are struggling.

Inflation is shrinking your pay cheque, but the federal government is fiddling while the fire is raging around us.

If you worry your kids won’t be able to afford a home of their own, just wait until the next million people arrive on our shores, mostly in Ontario; the competition for a place to live explodes.

Don’t be one of the people sitting quietly on the back of the bus. 

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