For reasons unclear, I find myself feeling a bit hopeful this week, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say optimistic.

After months of speculation, which became especially tiresome in recent weeks, we can now be reasonably assured that we’re headed to the polls on September 20, with an election call due on Sunday.

Unlike Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh, who’ve decided to paint an election as risky and unnecessary, I’d argue there’s no better time for an election than when Canada is facing 50 years of deficits, a government introducing a series of bills attacking free speech, and a pandemic that has revealed the ruling party’s priorities.

Canadians deserve the right to endorse or reject the Liberals’ handling of the pandemic and every other file over the last two years.

But, back to the hopefulness. I want this election to be about issues that matter.

No, I haven’t been smoking anything (except for some brisket, but I don’t think that has mind-altering affects). Before you laugh me out of the digital building, hear me out. Elections are often won or lost based on things that barely scratch the surface of what Canadians are dealing with.

Concepts like “change” and “staying the course” have proven valuable in campaigns, though they’re based on emotional appeals more than factual ones. My hope this time around is that the stakes on what government is capable of have been raised high enough that campaign commitments and political records will not be so abstract to voters.

I mentioned the deficit earlier, but it bears repeating. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Canada won’t balance the books until 2070 without a serious course correction. Some of this damage comes from pandemic spending, but also big ticket promises from the Trudeau government, such as a $30 billion childcare program. An aging population doesn’t help matters, nor does the fact that Trudeau was amassing deficits in his five pre-pandemic years, leaving no buffer for a crisis that required major spending.

Boring as they may be, debt and deficits matter. The argument against them should appeal to socialists as much as fiscal hawks: the more money that’s going into debt payments, the less that’s going into whatever new program is being promised.

As much as the pandemic has brought economic woes to the forefront, it’s also presented a critical opportunity to deal with China. Now, Canada already had this with China’s imprisonment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the latter of which was just sentenced to 11 years in prison on trumped up “espionage” charges. China has never been held to account for its negligence in allowing the COVID-19 pandemic to begin, and its cover-up of its early data. Trudeau has shied away from directing any criticism towards China on this file. His health minister, Patty Hajdu, went so far as to accuse a reporter of “feeding conspiracy theories” for daring to ask about it. O’Toole has taken a tough stance on China, from his support for the motion condemning China’s genocide against Uighurs to calling for a boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

If there were ever a foreign policy issue for Canadians to reflect on in an election, it’s the growing threat China poses to the west on economic, security, and health grounds.

And then there’s the issue that I maintain is a hill to die on – free speech. The Liberals failed to pass Bill C-10, which would have significantly overhauled CRTC’s mandate to allow for regulation of internet publishers, before Parliament’s summer recess, in part because of public backlash which was eventually taken up by the Conservatives. The Liberals also introduced Bill C-36, which would revive a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act allowing for prosecution of online “hate speech” on human rights grounds.

The previous iteration of this bill was repealed thanks to concerns about its negative effect on free speech – and now it’s coming back. This has gotten minimal coverage in the media, and virtually no pushback from opposition parties. It needs to be an election issue.

What the few weeks holds for Canadian voters we don’t yet know, but my call is to make this election about issues that matter, because it is very much an election that does.