Dear editor,
The political circus is in full swing in Canada and every day there are increasing insults to Canadians’ intelligence.
Although I am not a member of any political party, the Harper government looks more and more desperate to retain its dictatorial power and recognizes no depths to achieving this. Even if you support Conservative values, you are being treated as incapable of insightful analysis, i.e. seeing through the political fog. The Conservatives will match $100M in public donations to assist Syrian refugees. This is disgraceful – the $100M is our tax dollars to begin with and our international responsibility for adequate refugee relief should not be tied to charitable donations; the Dept. Of Citizenship and Immigration has returned $250M to the treasury, probably to ‘balance’ the phony budget; the government was complicit in sending Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen to Syria, to be tortured by the Assad regime; now we are bombing Syrian citizens, while ignoring that this contributes to the refugee crisis.
Now the Harper government is trying to buy our votes by Steve posing with his hockey buddy Gretzky, whose hockey abilities I respect, but it would be foolish to rely on him for any political advice. Attempting to bribe us by promising to use $35M of our tax dollars to match our Terry Fox Foundation contributions tarnishes the memory of Terry and should be rejected. The same PM who audited charitable organizations to ensure that they comply with his political philosophy in order to maintain their tax exempt status wants to donate millions of our tax dollars to cancer research while refusing to renew the $36B national health accord. The political spin goes on and will undoubtedly sink to new depths before Oct. 19, counting on the collective amnesia of Canadians.
Fred Muzin
Courtenay