The ballots haven't even entered the mail stream yet, and the blame game has already begun.
We speak, of course, about the transit plebiscite.
Metro Vancouver residents will very shortly be voting on whether to accept a 0.5 per cent increase to the PST to help fund 10 years' worth of transit projects, put forth by the Mayors' Council.
With polls leaning heavily towards the No side, the Yes side is pounding the pavement, promising to have Jim Pattison watch over the funds, and generally launching every glad-handing politician at every SkyTrain lineup hoping to move the vote.
When the plebiscite was first discussed, the provincial government tended to catch the heat.
After all, if the province was managing things properly, why would it even come to this?
And then the Mayors' Council looked like the ones to blame. After all, how had they let things get stalled like this? Why couldn't the mayors agree on anything?
And then there's TransLink - whatever that really is.
The average Joe rightfully looks at the golden deals of bigwigs at the organization, the fitness facilities for staff, and the broken plans for - well, a lot of things - and thinks someone in that mess has to be to blamed.
And now, yes, now, the over-55 set are getting blamed.
Everyone with a car and a carport and some grey in their hair is already getting blamed for voting No and scuttling a future filled with shiny new buses, better bridges and a SkyTrain system that actually runs.
The baby boomers are apparently, when polled, leaning towards No because they don't use or need transit, they hate paying more taxes and spend a lot of time in Arizona or in their La-Z-Boy recliners hissing at Mulcair when he is on the news. Unfortunately, some of this may be true.
But what we know for sure is that no one under 50 or over 50 who is not an elected politician or a TransLink executive or board member is to blame.
If the plebiscite, as predicted, fails, there'll be a lot of blame to go around.
