My gratitude is tremendous for Green Party candidate Ken Melamed’s incredible presentation to our Grade 7 class and for doing so while he most likely had other, more important engagements.
His time was not wasted, for I have learned very much about the political party and its stance on certain topics such as voting or the lack of it, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) project and the Syrian refugee crisis.
One of the topics that interested me was Mr. Melamed’s disappointment on the failure of the voting system in a democratic government. I agree on the flaws of the “first past the post” system in which if one political party is voted for more, it has all the power, instead of all the political parties getting an amount of power equal to the number of votes they receive.
However, I disagree with his idea of lowering the voting age to 16. Although it would definitely hook in more registered voters, a majority of those voters would be making uninformed decisions.
One thing I would like to know is what the Green Party would do about the economy and the absence of jobs in Canada.
John Richard Patrick O’Brennan
Grade 7, Don Ross Middle School, Squamish
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I thought Green Party candidate Ken Melamed’s presentation to our Grade 7 class had a lot of interesting facts about the election and the Green Party. My favourite topic that he talked to us about was Germany. The fact that stood out the most to me was the fact that Germany has a Green party as its form of government. I found this fascinating because Mr. Melamed had also told us about how Germany was one of the top countries in the world for being green and helping refugees and is a very democratic society. For those reasons, I think having the Green Party as Canada’s government could help our country out and do a lot of good for our society.
Cassidy Butterworth
Grade 7, Don Ross Middle School, Squamish
