LETTER

 

------  Unnecessary election

 

I find offensive that politicians offer up bafflegab to legitimate questions. People think they’re hiding something. No, they’re making clear they have nothing to say.  It’s not good enough for a Prime Minister who, asked if he has a monetary policy, answers that when talk turns to economics, he prefers to focus on families.  More votes by being vacuous as compared to clueless? Nor for the Leader of the Opposition to claim that he has "a plan" to solve every problem, without ever favouring us with a brief outline of what it is. Either he hasn’t mastered it himself or he thinks we’re too stupid to understand. Neither conclusion is a vote-getter.

Both men had reason to remember Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female Prime Minister, who, in 1993, led the Progressive Conservative Party in a federal election. During a press scrum, she refused to answer a journalist’s question saying that this was “no time to discuss serious issues”.  She may have meant the scrum, not the campaign, but the harm had been done. The reply was considered arrogant; her campaign sank like a rock.

Mr. Trudeau wanted a majority to ram through measures he felt would  rid us of the horrors of the epidemic. It has been refused him. Does that mean he won’t try again?  I can’t recall what exactly those measures were, nor that the Opposition were strenuously opposed. Certainly, it did not deadlock Parliament.  I hope he doesn’t petulantly deny us his solution to this problem; people are still dying. 

Let’s put an unnecessary election behind us and insist this new Parliament get on with its mandate which is to administer the affairs of state efficiently, effectively, and responsibly. And let the wrath of an enraged electorate swoop down  upon any who would force upon us yet another such waste of time and money, before the four-year term is up.

Ronald Lefebvre

Aylmer