Letter to the editor

A7

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Speak Up

Merely six weeks after our useless election that cost taxpayers $300 million, Stephen Harper is revealing his true right wing, neo-conservative colours. He says, through his Finance puppet Jim Flaherty, that all public funding to political parties will be suspended and this will save a modest $30 million per year. A literal drop in the federal revenue bucket which will have absolutely no impact on our current woes.

This is an outrageous attack on democracy. In one swipe he has all but eliminated the ability for any opposition party to effectively operate. No oppostion. No democracy. Politics can be dirty, but this is not politics, this is autocratic behaviour so indicative of Stephen Harpers' values.

In real numbers, this cut means that the federal opposition parties will collectively lose more than 60 per cent of their annual revenues which is used to pay staffers, fund party research and expenses and simply allow our democratic opposition to function. This cut also means a mere 37 per cent reduction in total revenue for the Consevative Party of Canada. See a pattern here?

At this time, the majority of Canadians are looking to their federal government for leadership, discussion and action on current burning issues such as the tens of thousands of newly unemployed, pension plan protections, infrastructure investment and the collapse of the manufacturing sector just to name a few.

While a historic number of Canadians watch and wait intently for their federal leaders to deliver non-partisan, realistic solutions to these issues, what we instead have received is a swift kick to our democratic family jewels and you can bet there's more to come.

I, for one, feel that such an implausible policy should be publicly addressed by our federal MP Tilly O'Neill-Gordon to state how she, and we as citizens, can support this attack on our democratic system.

A very concerned citizen,

Brett Power