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If born before 1942, you remember the war years, as well as the 1950s, the atomic bomb and the Cold War. Born after 1948 and you’re a baby boomer, with an expansive set of expectations: you had plastic toys, unlike us earlier geezers, who played with pieces of wood.

But all of us doubtless had parents who saved string and hated debt, so we tend to keep a watch on the pennies. If our parents knew that Harper changed the law in 2007 so he can borrow billions in “non-budgetary” spending without Parliament’s permission or oversight, thus ballooning the debt, they’d be rolling in their graves.

Despite our differences, us geezers have beady eyes. We fix those beady eyes on politicians, every single one of which is — to us — a kid in short pants, though some of those pants are shorter than others. What do the short-pant kids have in mind for the “geezer vote”?

One of our top concerns is our health-care system, which polls say is preferred to private alternatives by 80-90 per cent of Canadians. Our system, started in Saskatchewan by Tommy Douglas in 1946 and in Alberta by Social Credit in 1950, became near-universal in 1966 under Lester Pearson, supported by the NDP. Warning bell: Pearson was a Liberal, and we remember Harper’s vow to destroy anything built by the Libs.

Is it true that Harper has already put in place a $36 billion cut to health care? There are so many peas under the shuffle cups that we get confused, but that does seem to be the case, measured against the previous trajectory of transfers. Is hatred by one party for another, regardless of the public interest, a sound basis for public policy? Most of us think not. We want the health care we’ve paid for over many decades to be there for us when we break our hips while sliding over the ice to collect our pension cheques at the new group mailboxes we’ll be forced to use, since Harper is cancelling door-to-door delivery.