Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Something To Gladden The Spirit

During this campaign, while Harper has been appealing to the worst in Canadians, I have to admit that my faith in humanity has been faltering. The following, which I saw on Facebook, is something of a restorative.



"You see, you've misjudged us... You've underestimated us." A former Calgarian writes an open letter to Stephen Harper and explains what it means to be Canadian.

“Dear Mr. Harper,

I live in BC with my husband and two little girls. I grew up in Calgary and have many friends and family members there. I’m white and in my early 40s. One of us is a stay at home parent, so we benefit 100% from the direct deposits in lieu of a national childcare program. We also benefit 100% from income splitting. And we can afford to take advantage of the increased allowance in our TFSAs.

In other words, we're the picture of the family who benefits the most from your economic policies. But we're not voting Conservative on October 19th.

You see, you've misjudged us. We enjoy our standard of living, we work hard for it but it's not the only thing that matters to us.

You assume we don't care about our first nation’s neighbours, or Canadians trying to bring their family members here from war torn countries. That we don't care about less fortunate Canadians, our veterans, or scientists. You think we don't mind that to save a few bucks and balance the books we axed the census, dumped decades of research from our libraries, cut funding to CBC, underspent our budgets in important departments and closed coast guard stations. You figure we no longer want our lakes and rivers protected and that we don't understand that climate change is a far greater risk to our way of life than Barbaric Cultural Practices.

You've underestimated us.

On October 19, we're not voting for our bank balance. We're voting for change because we want the caring Canada of our youth back. The Canada that supported our single mothers that gave us the opportunity to succeed in the first place.

Mary Cleaver”

4 comments:

  1. Thx. for sharing Lorne. It's a great letter.

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  2. Harper and his supporters will refer to her as self hating, old-stock Canadian. :)

    Just voted yesterday (suburb of Ottawa). The waiting period was about 50 mins. (about 50 people in front of us). I was told that the waiting periods were longer on Friday and Sat. Sun. was slower. There were people who left without voting yesterday too but apparently the numbers were higher Fri. and Sat.

    Heard from my daughter in University that she had voted and that there are hundreds of thousands of people signed up (Facebook?) for Harper's farewell party. Told her to encourage all her friends to vote to ensure that Harper is not disappointed and gets his farewell party. She thinks most of her friends had voted. Hopefully, the young people will help make a difference this election.

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    Replies
    1. It will certainly gladden my heart if young people turn out in significant number this time around, Anon. I saw a stat in the paper the other day that people over 65 had a turnout rate of about 78% (they were characterized as mainly Conservative supporters (but I hope that is just a stereotype), while young people only voted at a rate of about 38% in 2011.

      Although pundits have questioned whether a larger-than-normal turnout at the advance polls really means anything, I am hopeful it is indicative of a massive appetite for change.

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