I will be voting today but frankly, I am not even sure it matters. I feel awful saying this as someone who works at encouraging members of my low-income housing project to become more civically engaged. But as a young black woman, I really don't think my vote matters to politicians and despite the fact that I come from one of the largest visible minority communities in Ottawa, I also come from one of the poorest, and throughout this election I have heard politicians talking to those with wealth, those who own houses, those who earn enough disposable income to invest in their campaigns. Not people like me. But one positive aspect of this election has been the number of black candidates who are running.

Retired diplomat Robert Fowler made a splash in March when he voiced the widely held view that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's slavish support for Israel was driven by ethnic politics. Fowler told a Liberal Party conference on Canadian foreign policy that "the scramble to lock up the Jewish vote in Canada meant selling out our widely admired and long-established reputation for fairness and justice."

In 2007, the Harper government gleefully boasted about how quickly it managed to negotiate the U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement. What it failed to mention was the deal's disastrous impact on Canada's forestry sector, one that has cost taxpayers $1 billion and counting, and thousands of Canadian jobs.

Last week Harper and his team were at it again. This time it was the agreement with the U.S. on how to handle the "Buy American" provisions in their stimulus legislation. While the Conservatives have been touting their apparent success in having Canadian companies exempted from such regulations, the reality is that there are grave concerns about what the deal means for job losses in Canada.