Martin Regg Cohn: Five things to consider if you’re still not sure who to vote for

On election eve, never mind the horse race.

For once, can we cut to the chase - the substance instead of the suspense?

Herewith, my concise Voter's Guide focused on policies - not probabilities about which horse is leading or losing ground from day to day.

I don't presume to tell you who has a winning personality, just who comes closest to what you might be looking for personally. People aren't looking for a recommendation, just information.

Most voters are less interested in who's ahead than in how they measure up. They want to understand what the rival parties stand for, and how they stand apart.

You can find a thoughtful survey of party positions compiled by the Star's Ottawa Bureau online. All that said, my purpose below is to pick a few key issues where the differences are greatest and most substantive, not stylistic.

Here are the top five top decision points for my abbreviated Voter's Guide:

• Climate change: It's easy to get down in the weeds on greenhouse gas emissions. The Green party used to own this issue, but has lost credibility by raising the temperature on Gaza instead of lowering it on global warming with incessant, internecine attacks on party Leader Annamie Paul that undermined her message of cross-party collaboration. Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole deserves credit for forcing his party to talk about climate change (even if a majority of his members won't hear of it), but his last-minute repentance is a pittance that doesn't go nearly far enough.

The NDP's Jagmeet Singh is demanding more action, but his platform offers less specifics. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau makes a fair point that after a slow start, his plan belatedly goes furthest, fastest - based on an endorsement from former B.C. Green leader (and climate scientist) Andrew Weaver, who called it bold and thoughtful." If you're trying to cut through the claims and counterclaims, Weaver's academic and political credentials are hard to discount.

• Child care and pharmacare: Again, full credit to O'Toole for forcing his Conservative party to pay attention, albeit with a half-baked plan that relies on refundable tax credits that won't create any new spaces and offers one-tenth the cash flow. Full marks to the Liberals for putting child care back on the agenda after the Tories (thanks to the NDP) derailed the last national plan in 2006, with an ambitious $30 billion accepted by most provinces. The NDP's criticisms (too little, too late) ring hollow, given that they have aped the program in their own platform and bear responsibility for sidelining it last time.

On pharmacare, the NDP has fought the good fight while the Liberals (and most Canadians, it seems) have been distracted. While child care isn't getting much attention either, it is very much on the agenda - for if the Liberals lose, so does daycare, not just this time but for a long time.

• Leadership, not least on COVID-19: This campaign was supposed to be about turning the corner on the pandemic, thanks to a relatively successful vaccine strategy for which the Liberals were keen to harvest voter gratitude. Instead, it became a sleeper issue, emerging from hibernation only in the home-stretch. Most world leaders bear the scars of their own COVID-19 miscalculations, and Trudeau is hardly exempt (calling an early election to cash in has clearly pushed the envelope).

But O'Toole has lost credibility by trying to steer a middle course that shows a lack of leadership - refusing to require vaccinations for his own candidates and criticizing vaccination mandates for other public servants. The NDP's Singh gets credit for a positive approach on vaccination that avoided demonization.

• Foreign and defence policy: The media usually highlight these platform issues, though they are rarely vote-determining issues and there are few big differences. China and Afghanistan cropped up in this election cycle mostly due to the news cycle, and the divergences are mostly dubious claims of greater competence. There are tough questions with few easy answers to China's misconduct on the world stage, and every country was caught flat-footed on Afghanistan, so it's hard to imagine any of the rival leaders doing things much differently.

On defence, however, it's safe to say that O'Toole's Tories are the better bet. Disturbing allegations of sexual misconduct at the highest levels of the Canadian Forces show both a lack of leadership and trust that the Liberals have failed to rein in. On defence spending, O'Toole's right-leaning sympathies - he's a military veteran in his own right - suggest he's more likely to find the funding.

• Indigenous reconciliation: No issue lends itself more easily to criticism - Trudeau offered his fair share before winning power, and now his opponents are doing the same. The Conservative critiques lack credibility given their own turn in government, rejecting calls for an inquiry that the Liberals delivered, and their reluctance to fully embrace the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples when the Liberals moved forward on it. The NDP's Singh has kept up the pressure on boil-water advisories, while Trudeau points to major gains even if he hasn't completely eliminated them as promised.

On all these issues, remember the reality that no politician is perfect. In truth, every party in power ends up with a record that's difficult to defend, and only newly arrived opposition leaders can claim purity - there is no track record for comparison (the NDP has never won federally, but has its own baggage after governing in Western provinces).

In politics, as in life, the perfect is the enemy of the good. When trying to pick a politician, avoid the quest for perfection - opt for a process of elimination or the lesser of evils.

Throwing up your hands won't get you very far. It's not just an abdication of duty but a dereliction of democracy.

Refusing to decide for yourself merely delegates the decision to others. It not only silences your voice on voting day, it deprives you of the right to criticize what you don't like later - you'll have only yourself to blame.

Is this an unnecessarily early election that merits punishment at the polls? Be careful what you wish for, and vote for - it might later feel self-defeating if it deflects you from issues that matter more (that said, I confess the anger over early elections goes over my head, perhaps because I find it hard to overdose on democracy).

Even if you think this is a wasteful election, a vote is a terrible thing to waste. As a foreign correspondent for 11 years, I watched people die for democracy overseas, which is why giving up on democracy at home breaks my heart.

When people around the world dodge bullets to cast their ballots, there is no good excuse for Canadians to duck their duty to democracy. Wherever your sympathies lie, whomever you vote for, you owe it to yourself to cast your ballot on election day.

Bless you for doing it.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn