Letter to the Editor Matthew D. Livingstone of Sudbury – A Vote for Canada – April 14, 2011

I agree with any politician that says Canadians deserves better because we desperately do. The manner and deportment of Mr. Harper and his government has been undeniably child-like, arrogant and at times simply illegal, yet too many Canadians seem willing to give Mr. Harper and his government a free pass on character and integrity for the mistaken belief that these behaviours can be overlooked during the trying economic times and while our economy is apparently still too fragile for a responsible, accountable and trustworthy government.

.

I ask you all, what would you do if your children were to act like Mr. Harper and his government have acted in the past few years? Well? You can keep right on deluding yourselves that a tiny bit of mythic good outweighs the enormous bad or you can face up to the fact that Mr. Harper and his party simple do not care beyond votes about Canadian families or their futures.

.

So much of what Mr. Harper claims in his reality is simply not true and he uses verbal slight of hand and misdirection to continue to put forward his false claims of progress and good while fear mongering to push rational discussion aside as unnecessary in his “troubled” economic times. He makes dangerously untrue statements about the legality of coalition governments while exploiting them to remain in power.

.

He himself called for a coalition government when his party sat in opposition but of course Mr. Harper would have you believe he was trying to unite the right and save his precious Canada. Again, more of Harper’s verbal slight of hand. Mr. Harper’s long train wreck of pork barrel spending simple boggles the mind when you watch the Conservatives current attacks ads that use Iggy’s G.S.T. statements from four year past to suggest that the Liberals are all about raising taxes while his own government bribed the Premiers of Ontario and British Columbia to implement his H.S.T. that resulted in a Harper supported tax increase for those of you who are already jumping up and down to blame your respective provincial governments. More Tory slight of hand.

.

Every Canadian recognizes the need to support and fund our treasured quality of life. Much of that support comes in the form of taxes and while it is true that some taxes will go up, they should. I am of course referring to the lottery-sized, tax relief Canadian corporations have enjoyed and would continue to enjoy in ever increasing amounts should Mr. Harper ever gain control over our Parliament.

.

It’s time for Canada’s most profitable corporations to share the tax burden that every single Canadian continues to shoulder regardless of their economic status while the corporations spread billion$ in profits around to their shareholders while having unmitigated gall to claim they’re creating jobs with their new found Tory tax windfall. More of Stephen Harper’s verbal slight of hand.

.

The Conservative tax policy is a virtual mirror of the disastrous tax policies that have all but crippled the United States of America and threaten to plunge it and many other countries with similar unsustainable policies into unimaginably deep cuts in every single aspect of government and social services that do not involve corporate interests. The sad truth is that we have become an incredibly selfish and petty people, more concerned about large screen TVs, new vehicles every three years, smart phones and our daily doses on Timmy’s rather than the failing state of our social safety net or the disastrous future we’re imposing on our children because of our selfish and irresponsible lifestyles.

.

The plain and simply truth is that Conservative governments have historically and habitually saddled generations of Canadians with huge deficits, followed by years of slow and painful recovery. Unfortunately for most Canadians this endless cycle of Tory deficits followed by slow and painful recovery has taken it’s toll and with the ever-increasing and more massive deficits combined with the shrinking take-home pay of Canadians, our ability as a nation to recovery becomes infinitely more difficult with every cycle of boom and bust.

.

Nothing! Absolutely nothing has changed in the Conservative’s one-off policies or recent budget to address the massive structural deficits that they have created. If anything, the Tory’s continued practice of hit and miss policy decisions coupled with the continuation of corporate socialism make deep program cuts all but inevitable and add substantially more misery to a slow and painful recovery they fail to acknowledge even exists. Make no mistake about it, Mr. Harper has no desire to increase the federal governments support for health care, education or anything for that matter that resembles the kind of corporate socialism he and virtually all right-wing governments around the world so boisterously defend as necessary in order to keep our fragile economies a float.

.

What Mr. Harper fails to tell Canadians is that without the kind of responsible regulations and government oversight of previous Liberal governments he claims shackle the hounds of prosperity, Canada would be in very similar and equally desperate situation as the United States of America find themselves in today. I can only hope with all my heart that Canadians of all political stripes see and understand the profound failure of Mr. Harper and his government to govern with the integrity, transparency and honesty that he so passionately railed about during his previous election campaigns.

.

For the future of our country, our sovereignty and our children I urge you all think long and hard about the consequences of a Conservative majority government lead by Stephen Harper. Matthew D. Livingstone Sudbury, ON