Dear Editor:
Re: Viewpoint (Expatriate Love), July 29
I can see that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are in for a tough election. Your July 29th editorial “Expatriate love” seems to cheerlead the opinion of a know-nothing Hollywood actor whose totally uninformed stance on policy blames the wrong guys.
In addition, the adjacent editorial cartoon (was) far from accurate.
The last sentence of the editorial is completely incorrect and misleading (you did not use quotations so we are not sure if these are your words or Donald Sutherland’s) “It is not our democracy the Conservatives are trying to protect, he argues, but rather their own electoral fortunes.”
The law that prevents voters who have been out of Canada for five or more years was enacted in 1993 (according to the National Post’s Tristin Hopper) and subsequently left untouched by five Liberal governments since then.
This law has nothing to do with Stephen Harper or the present day Conservatives. Yours and Donald Sutherland’s attempt to pin it on the current government is disingenuous at best and partisan at worst.
It is certainly within your right to disagree with the court’s decision upholding the law but perhaps your readers might have been reminded of the 50,000 or so Canadian ‘citizens of convenience’ we spent large sums rescuing a few years ago from troubles in Lebanon only to find they, by and large, all moved back to that region. This would give some balance as to the pros/cons of this law.
Finally the editorial cartoon is funny how? The Conservatives have run a cleaner government than any in living memory. All governments have scandals.
The most prominent scandal — Senate expenses of Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau — has also involved Liberal senators as well (Mac Harb) and to equal or greater dollar amounts.
One decisive way of handling this Senate problem would be to change or dismantle it. Again Harper and the Conservatives tried this but the Supreme Court shot down this attempt forcing it to the level of a constitutional change. (If memory serves me your editorial at the time also blamed Harper for not knowing in advance the Supreme Court would overrule his request.)
So he is trying another tactic of attrition to make the Senate truly irrelevant. Seems a reasonable strategy and I cannot help wonder if your cartoonist would not be singing their praises if Justin Trudeau or Thomas Mulcair were attempting the same thing?
Ted Shandro
North Vancouver
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