I gotta vote on January 23rd, but I know pretty much shit-all about Canadian politics, so I had to do a bit of research. There's a list of all the parties you can vote for, and links to their homepages, but what sucks is that none of the parties are willing to state in an unambiguous way why they think it would be in your best interest to vote for them, and they don't say why the other parties suck either. If every party just presented these two key pieces of information, I'd get everyone's viewpoint on everyone, and it'd be a lot easier to make my decision.

So I basically had to read up about every political party, find out what political stance they have, and then cross-reference that with a description of the political stance to try to get an idea of what ideologies each party represents. So here's a summary of my findings, followed with a "yay" or "nay" vote, and my reasons for voting that way.

Liberal Party of Canada (Liberalism): limitations on the power of government and religion, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a free market economy that supports private enterprise, and a system of government that is transparent. This form of government favors liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law, and an equal opportunity to succeed. Sounds good to me. Yay.

Conservative Party of Canada (Conservative): Couldn't understand what they want. Nay.

Bloc Quebecois (Quebec nationalism): Quebec is too French as it is. When I receive court summons and other difficult to understand legal documents, they're in French and only French, as opposed to bilingual. This displeases me greatly. Nay.

NDP (Social Democracy/Democratic Socialism): Social Market Economy over Free Market, Fair Trade over Free Trade, extensive system of social security, Government-owned or subsidized programs of education, health care, child care for all citizens, Moderate to high taxation to fund government expenditure, progressive taxes, secular and progressive social policy, foreign policy supporting multilateralism and international institutions such as the United Nations. I like some things, but not other things. Nay.

AAEVP (animal rights, activist environmentalism): Too extreme for me. Nay.

Canadian Action Party (Nationalism, Anti-globalization): Unsure, leaning towards bad. Nay.

Christian Heritage Party of Canada (Christian Democracy): I Want to keep religion and politics seperate. Nay.

Communist (Communism): While I like the idea of communism, I think it is extremely difficult to have a successful implementation of it, and so I would need to see a detailed plan of how they plan on producing a communist society before I vote for them (and I couldn't find such a plan). Nay

First Peoples National Party of Canada (indigenous nationalism): Nothing for me. Nay.

Green (Green Party of Canada): a commitment to the methods of consensus decision making, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy wherever feasible, measuring well-being as an alternative to consumer price index based means of measuring economic growth, full cost accounting and an end to dirty subsidy of pollution by government, a green tax shift that would increase consumption and sales taxes on all resource-intensive items, while reducing income tax and capital gains tax, a cessation of all taxes levied against strictly local production and trade, against nuclear power and the build up of persistent organic pollutants based on a strict adherence to the precautionary principle where technologies are rejected unless they can be proven to not cause significant harm to the health of living things or the biosphere, an end to biological forms of pollution and human health damage via the subsidy of dairy farming and the meat industry, investing heavily in human capital. Sounds good to me. Yay.

Libertarian (Libertarianism): legalization of drugs, gambling, and prostitution; against censorship, prohibiting gang membership, mandating seatbelts, and taxing alcohol and tobacco. Some libertarians, including anarcho-capitalists, oppose all taxation, which they consider state-sanctioned theft. Most libertarians, however, including minarchists, support minimal taxation for the limited purpose of funding public institutions that would protect civil liberties and property rights, including police, military (with no conscription), and judicial courts. Probably too extreme for me. Nay.

Marijuana (Anti-Cannabis Prohibition): Nothing for me. Nay.

Marxist-Leninist (Communism): While I like the idea of communism, I think it is extremely difficult to have a successful implementation of it, and so I would need to see a detailed plan of how they plan on producing a communist society before I vote for them (and I couldn't find such a plan). Nay

PC Party (Red Toryism): Couldn't understand what they want. Nay.

WBP (Western Canadian Separatist): Nothing for me. Nay.

There were a few parties whom, if they got elected, wouldn't really bother me that much, but I only have one vote, so rather than spare it on the "don't cares", I had to save it for the parties which I did like. Because of this, I wish the elections worked on a negative-vote system, where you put checkmarks with as many parties as you want, indicating which parties you DON'T want to get elected (so checking all parties but one is equivalent to voting for that one party), and the party with the fewest negative-votes wins. People who don't show up to vote are obviously not nega-voting for anyone, so they're okay with any party, no matter who gets elected.

Anyway, reviewing the above, it looks like the two parties that work well for me are the Liberal Party of Canada and the Green Party. Of the two, the Green Party seems slightly better for me, so that's probably who I'm gonna end up voting for.