How will I vote if we have a spring federal election?

I am less and less enchanted with the current government.   I am not thrilled that the Prime Minister has done little or nothing to reduce the size of the federal government.   He has not acted to fix the disparity between the value of votes in different parts of Canada.   He has done little to improve the Canadian democracy.   My problem is that there is no other federal party that would seem to be better.

I can not vote for the Green Party of Canada because the federal party has done little to organize itself as a grassroots political party.   At the moment it feels like it is only there as an election vehicle for Elizabeth May and that is in my opinion fundamentally wrong.   There is no attempt as far as I can see in Victoria of a local riding association.  Their candidate Jared Geisbrecht seems to be like so many Green candidates and running for federal office without first getting elected, or even trying to get elected, to local government and get some experience.

Let us go to the Liberal next.   The party under Michael Ignatieff is living down to my expectations.   My concern with Ignatieff has always been that he has virtually no political experience and is coming into the role of leader of the Official Opposition at an old age, we will be 64 in May.   I like a lot of writing on international issues, I am just not convinced he can lead his party.

The local Liberal candidate is Oak Bay mayor Christopher Causton.  The Liberals are lucky to get a strong candidate like him.  He is a decent guy but not good enough a local candidate for me to overcome him running for the Liberals.

The NDP federally I can not stand at all, primarily because the party is lead by Jack Layton and I have heard nothing from him that convinces me that he is sincere about anything or that he has any sort of basic understanding of economics.

The local MP is Denise Savoie of the NDP and she has been a good constituency MP.   If the NDP were more like Labor in Australia or Labour in the UK, I would very likely consider voting for her.  I would also consider her very seriously if I did not like the local Conservative candidate.

I should add that on my issues I do not agree with Denise Savoie, but it is important to me to support hard working MPs no matter what party they are from.

This brings me to Patrick Hunt of the Conservatives.   I know personally and I am very much impressed with his personal support for democratic reform.   He would make a good MP because he would be a good representative for Victoria.   So the odds are very high I will be voting for him.

Unless the current government really does something that I can not fundamentally support, I will be voting for Patrick Hunt.  If I really can not for the Conservatives I will vote for Denise Savoie because she works hard as an MP.