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Shopping Mall, Or Education Mall?

Salvador Dalí. Figure at a Window
"Wow, I didn't know there was something outside the shopping mall!"
(Salvador Dalí. Figure at a Window. Source)

Pardon me, but I have a small question. Is there such a thing as an "Education Mall" during the federal elections in Canada? I know there are plenty of shopping malls, where consumers are offered all kinds of products for their convenience. But is there some place in our riding where voters are offered information on all the candidates and their electoral platforms?

If no such thing exists, wouldn't it be rather easy to set up such an "Education Mall"? In a way, we only need two things. We need a table and a few chairs in the main hallway of a shopping mall. Then we need to send an e-mail to all candidates in the riding, inviting them to come and put some copies of their electoral platform on that table, and maybe sit down a few hours a week and talk to voters. That's all!

In my opinion, this would do much to increase democratic participation. Many people complain that "politicians are rotten", and so on. But having the opportunity to meet with them would reduce those prejudices. Moreover, being able to "shop" all the electoral platforms of all the candidates would improve the quality of each vote, and help focus the campaign on the important issues instead of the slander.

All this applies to Canada in general, and in fact to any democracy. We could add that here, in the Province of Quebec, it would be very interesting to have such "Education Centers" not only in Shopping Malls, but also in parish halls. (Actually, during the last elections, Saint-Ambroise Parish in Montreal did it, so we'd just need to imitate them.) The Province of Quebec is networked by Parishes, and each Parish normally has a church basement or a parish hall. Moreover, the Church orders all it's faithful to participate as actively and as intelligently as possible in the democratic life of their country, while at the same time refusing to do partisan politics [CoSoDo, #424]. Actually, with a bit of advance planning, we could set up a "Roving Education Center", that would go from Parish to Parish, so that all candidates would have the opportunity of meeting people. Moreover, I'm willing to bet that the local Bishop would be very much in favor of such an initiative. (We could make a joke about this being an excellent opportunity for the Church to be politically correct! ;-)

So, would you like to go educate yourself after Mass, or before going shopping?

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