A month or so leading up to the Oct 15th federal election, a number of us – friends and relations – pondered over: “which of the two “main party” candidates should we support?”

There were 23 of us in total. All wondering who to vote for in the upcoming Canadian Federal Election.

Early in the campaign, a few pleasant query notes were sent to Ms Wai Young, Conservative candidate. Some of us were quite excited that there was finally, a Chinese-Canadian person who could speak English… running for office. To our chagrin, Ms Young never replied to any of our hello’s, nor to the emails, facebook messages… zilch…nada.

She only showed up at Chinese dinners, passing out election stuff with her helpers.

Then came the astonishing fact about her receiving the sweetheart package of over half a million bucks for 6 months of “small business consulting work” – a small biz of Ms Young’s, that no one had ever heard about. (BTW, we take full credit for informing the media early on about Ms Young’s fat taxpayer’s paid fee).

So we came to the conclusion that Liberal incumbent, Ujjal Dosanjh was the lesser of the two evils. The problem was that most of the participants in this group did not like Mr Dosanjh. He was seen as a home wrecker and a Grade ‘A’ opportunist who has done little for Vancouver South. You know, your classic stereotypical politician who only appears during campaign time.

And a few of us were not happy of how Dosanjh had pulled a fast one on then Liberal incumbent, Herb Dhaliwal. Herb was an okay politician, and often engaged himself in the community.

Do an internet search on what the Dosanjh v/s Dhaliwal story is, and we think you’d be fairly dismayed too.

So… yours truly and others checked out what else was out there.  But alas, the pickins’ were slim.

Then, some of us watched the candidates perform at an all candidates’ debate at David Thompson Secondary School. Wai Young only talked about herself, whereas Ujjal Dosanjh got a bit hot under his collar from questions from the floor. Mr Dosanjh was later overheard calling a respected DT teacher an “Asshole“. (see comment about this on a Georgia Straight political blog: http://straight.com/article-164315/conservatives-duck-debates?# ). The teacher (Mr. F) later brought this unprofessional slight by Mr Dosanjh to the class for discussion.

Mr F kindly informed the UGLY Chinese Canadian of the classroom discussion, and students were dismayed at the sad level of politics – reinforcing the perception that politicians are full of themselves.

We decided on a plan. None of us would vote for Conservative due to Ms Young’s arrogance.

So we held our noses and half heartedly supported Liberal Dosanjh. We didn’t want to give Dosanjh a lot of votes… so half of us voted Liberal, the other half Green.

Now …the recent recount gave Dosanjh a slim 20 vote victory.

So that got me thinking. What if we had all supported Wai Young? That would have given Dosanjh 12 less votes… so Young would have won by 35 votes (do your math: 23+12=35)

Yep. Every vote does count.