Tomorrow’s provincial election in B.C. is likely one of the most important in its recent history. Simply going to polls will not be enough. Voters have a responsibility to carefully wade through the rhetoric and engage in serious critical thinking when making this decision.

I believe voters, for the most part, are not fooled by the B.C. Liberals’ spending frenzy we have seen in the last few months. Giving back a small portion of what was taken does not make up for the hurt and damage done. There are endless examples of that thanks to cutbacks, downsizing and dismantling.

Lower welfare rates, increased user fees, de-listed prescription drugs, costly homecare and low paying no-benefit jobs have left many of us struggling. The question I am left with is, how is this good for our economy? How is this good for small business? We know the smaller the disposable income people have, the more likely they are to spend it locally and when that is taken away, who’s left to spend locally? We also know that people making $6 – $8 an hour don’t buy new cars or homes.

The answers keep coming to me in the form of high-priced B.C. Liberal ads and empty spending announcements: the B.C. Liberals are not here for you or me; they are not committed to ensuring working people have what we need, or in protecting human rights or workers’ rights. They are here to privatize and sell off B.C. to the highest bidder — and sometimes the lowest bidder if they are their friends. The rest of us are stuck trying to survive on what’s left.

And let’s not forget about when, not that long ago, the economy under the Liberals was tanking. They blamed it on SARS in Toronto, forest fires throughout the province, and of course the NDP. Now that we are seeing an upswing in the economy the Liberals attribute that to “our plan is working.” But has anyone asked out loud how many of those “new jobs” created pay $6 – $8 dollars an hour or are part-time jobs? How many of those jobs come with benefits? How many are really family-supporting jobs? I know women who are working three jobs just to get by. Where’s the promise for a better future in that? Is that considered an economic success? And I won’t even get started on childcare.

Women, families, seniors, students, people in poverty, patients, aboriginal communities, workers and people with disabilities have all felt the cruelty of the B.C. Liberals, and we are still waiting for the “pay-off.”

Having said all of this, I have to add that my biggest fear and biggest concern is how, through this endless attack, we have normalized so much pain and suffering. We seem to have come to a point in B.C. where we have lost our way and lost our identity. That happens to people when we continually compromise our values or make tradeoffs.

In democracies it is said that a government reflects the electorate. I cannot believe as a province, as people in our communities caring for our families and our neighbours, that our values are represented by the B.C. Liberals. That’s why this election is so critical. It is bigger than policy and legislation. For me and many of the people I talk with, it is about who we are as a province and what we care about at the end of the day when we go home to our families.

I don’t know about you, but at night I worry about whether we will be able to financially help my daughter go to university next year. I worry about my aging mother-in-law and whether the services she needs will be there. I worry about my nephew who is hoping to be a welder and how the changes to the apprenticeship program will affect him. While I care about the provincial debt (especially since it is the highest it has been in B.C.’s history) it doesn’t keep me up at night. It’s concern for the people in my life that are my priority.

So tomorrow, Election Day, my hope is that we get our identity back and that we bring those core values of caring with us into the voting booth.