The Bible says to love you enemies, so I will try to go easy on Julian Ichim.  I will be nice and say nothing worse than he is a sad, pathetic individual who hates the world and uses his platform as a candidate to go on extremist rants about why the world in wrong.

The thing that makes Ichim interesting is the fact that he is not devoid of a cute turn of phrase.  When criticising Conservative justice reforms that would see serious offenders spend more time in prison, he insisted that this was not the answer because jail is a "university for criminals."  That is a great soundbite, and that is what Ichim is good for as a candidate.  If you are dumb enough to give him an opportunity to break into the conversation--such as by taking a breath or something like that--he will swoop in with a well-rehearsed rant about why your position, and everyone in the wider world, is wrong.

In fact, Ichim reminds me of a G. K. Chesterton quote which says, "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."  This describes Ichim perfectly, except that he has no idea about what is right.  He knows that the 'British colonial,white-privileged, male-dominated, neo-imperial capitalist system' is wrong, but he gives no suggestions about how to make it right, or even what a right system would look like.  He just knows why the 'system' is wrong.

Ichim says he is running because we need more "regular" people in Parliament.  The only problem is, Ichim is the farthest thing possible from a regular Canadian.  At the most recent all-candidates meeting he peppered his rants with personal stories about stints in prison and anecdotes about his drug-abusing friends.  Not exactly a regular Joe.  And do you remember this political event from some years ago?

Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day being doused with chocolate milk by that most "regular" of Canadians, Julian Ichim.  One and the same.

So the man is a nutjob, with lots of anger, lots of reasons about what is going wrong in the world, but not a single workable idea about how to make things right.  Even when he does claim to have an ideal he doesn't have the courage to follow it through consistenly: he wants regular people elected to Parliament, and then presents himself as a candidate.