What are election ‘ballot’ questions for a blessed land?

Had a conversation the other day with a friend who teaches students looking to upgrade their general education and language skills, the majority of whom are refugees from a country a certain U.S. president would call a … well, you know what.

The upshot of the chat was that having just an inkling of what these refugees had endured that caused them to seek a safe and free life in wintry Canada puts into perspective the issues at stake in the election now underway. Issues? We rolled our eyes in unison.

A few hours away by modern air travel from Canada one can land in any number of dictatorial, violent, povertystricken, disease-rampant, pollution-choked and corruption-riddled countries the vast majority of whose citizens would find it incomprehensible how petty and partisan the political differences are in this blessed land.

So here we are, one week into an election whose outcome will determine which set of generally benign and wellmeaning citizens earn the dubious honour

of governing and answering to an inherently discontented populace and an intensely adversarial punditry, not to mention, as abruptly retired top federal civil servant Michael Wernick would have it, the vomitorium of social media.

So, based on Week 1, what do the people, and by the people we mean the gaggle of reporters on the campaign bus fed questions from their editors, care about? Why, another Globe & Mail unsourced story on Snc-lavalin, of course, and please-take-the-bait questions on Quebec’s bizarre religious dress code law, which all the perfectly tolerant folks outside Quebec naturally deplore.

Seriously, what do Canadians really care about as the campaign ramps up? According to a recent Abacus Data survey, of the top three concerns of Canadians the uppermost is the cost of living. Somebody please silence those crickets. Which party can lower prices on everything and/or give everybody more money? Any takers? Thought so.

Next? Health care. Provincial responsibility but with lots of federal funding. Liberals and NDP have free drug plans on offer, which is ho-hum for Quebecers who already have what is known as assurance médicaments.

Third most important issue affecting voters: Climate change. Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed identified this as a key issue that might determine who they vote for. That only one-third of Canadians sampled named environmental concerns as a critical priority might be troublesome to the Liberals who have decked themselves out as greener than the Greens.

We’ll skip number four, which is taxes, because, like death, it’s inevitable that everyone wants to pay less tax, especially rich people.

Number five of the issues affecting voters is housing affordability. Now we’re getting somewhere! Again, everything is relative when it comes to folks, younger folks mostly, being able to afford to buy a home, be it a condo or a house.

A study released last month by the National Bank, for example, looked at affordability in Canada’s largest housing markets. Ignoring Vancouver and Toronto, where housing prices, though stabilizing, are in a class of their own, the study concluded that affordability has improved somewhat in the past year.

In Quebec City, the “cheapest market” in Canada, the study calculates it would take 23 months for a household with a combined income of $50,000 to save enough, at a 10 per cent rate, to make the downpayment on a home worth $300,000, the average price for a noncondo dwelling in the city. Even by the standards of the post-war generation that would seem a modest commitment to realize the dream of owning a first home.

So, to be frank, housing affordability in this country, with mortgage rates at historical lows - does anybody remember the 20 percent rates of the 1980s? - is what might be described as, if not “rich peoples’ problems,” than “middle class peoples’ problems.” Nevertheless, basically all parties competing for votes have some kind of program to aid first-time home buyers.

A lot can happen in an election - a fraught premise for a weekly column. But, judged in the context of a very troubled world, the issues up for debate, while indeed important for determining the general direction of the country, are the kinds of concerns people in less fortunate lands would love to have.