I’m a proud Canadian.
I’m proud of the values I grew up with – embracing cultures and communities of the world, religious persuasion, celebrating that love is the person not the gender… believing in universal healthcare, access to quality education, funding for the arts, creating opportunities to work together in harmony with civility and compassion.
Understanding a helping hand and a second chance can make a positive difference. Recognising we are merely renting space on this planet and responsibility for generations to come in our treatment of our environment. Believing in fairness, a commitment to scientific discovery, that an open honest debate makes us stronger.
(Canadaka.net)
I’ve watched with an increasing sense of helplessness and frustration as the Canada I knew has been systematically dismantled. Nearly a decade under Harper has undermined the country I knew.
On a personal level, it has stripped me of the right to vote and even made me a 2nd class Canadian citizen. Under bill C-24, my citizenship can be taken away. And I have no recourse to protest this.
Today is a good day.
Today Canadians spoke up.
Today there is a change.
Today there is hope.
Thank you to all my Canadian friends who exercised their right to vote and spoke for all of us who cannot.
For a break-up of the election results check out: Canadian Federal Election 2015
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Everyday Asia 
Congratulations!
Its a massive sigh of relief!! 🙂
The Toronto Blue Jays won and Harper is gone. I think my day started out well. 🙂
Haha! Too true!! 🙂
Yay, I’m so happy Canada is out from under that awful man.
Me too!!!! Now if we could only do something about… 😉
I get a vote in the US still, I’ll be using it!
Go go go go!!!! I’ve always participated in every election I could since I turned 18 and had even voted at the Canadian High Commission in Delhi when I was a student in 1995.
It obviously rankles that there is no scope to participate or have my voice heard… so am pleased when those who have these rights make the effort to participate.
I am doing a happy dance here in Egypt!
Alison
We join you in the happy dance! I’m skipping out of my work mania mode to join some fellow Canadians for a celebratory drink in Mumbai! There may be a little dancing in the streets action in a select corner of Bandra tonight. 🙂
Not very much in touch with Canadian political scenario, but if you’re partying, Cheers from another Mumbaikar.
Many thanks! 🙂
I went to the advance polls, as did my wife. I knew I was having surgery 5 days before election day and did not want to risk not being able to go.
Bill C-24 did it for me. I’m a second class citizen too, now, basically on probation forever. Say the wrong thing, turn the wrong way and piss off some bureaucrat and next thing I’m history – with no trial, no recourse.
Harper was smug and a megalomaniac.
Under the Liberals, my money will be leaked out from my cash flow. The Cons would have completely stripped away my right to any cash at all, in their vision for a Canada made up of “old stock Canadians”. Someone should have told them that the old stock Canadians are the First Nations and Smug Steve and his crones are themselves not “old stock”…
I actually spoke to my MP who came to my front door and had a 15 minute chat with him about C-24. He tried to tell me it did not apply to me…. I may not be white and old stock, but I read, speak and write English better than most and I have taken post grad courses in law and certainly can read and make sense of it for myself. I did not need his patronizing attitude.
Bravo going to the advance polls and hope your surgery went well?
And yes Bill C-24 is a blight on our civil liberties. The very fact that someone could even attempt to justify it and to in a ‘there there dear, don’t worry your pretty little head about such things’ kind way…
In our Bombay Canadian Club celebration of the election results last night, we discovered that ALL who qualified to vote could not due to some glitch or the other. One who actually no longer qualified (like me) had snuck by having his mother say he still lives in Canada, getting him registered and then using the advance poll mail-in option.
In other words – the only one who voted did so through election fraud. All others eligible living outside of India could not. There is something very wrong with that picture.
Let’s hope the Liberals can unravel some of the damage done… just as I hope the damage being done in India with the current government can be rolled back if and when a more sane option prevails.
Hope spring eternal!