Well Said!

The other day I wrote a post critical of the 'blame game' being played by the NDP's Andrea Horwath to excuse her lack of progress during the recent Ontario provincial election. In a similar vein, Star letter-writer Michael Foley of Toronto offers his excoriating assessment of her rationalization:

Re: Liberal scare tactics cost party at polls, NDP leader says, June 26

I want to make this very clear, Andrea Horwath. I did not, nor have I ever voted out of fear. I vote for the leader who offers the best ideas for all Ontarians.
Horwath apparently lost because of an electorate that approached voting stations on wobbly knees, casting ballots with shaky hands, nervous sweat beading on worried brows. Not because of any missteps that she may have taken.

She lost and it was her own doing. She insults me and all who turned out to vote. It was her who abandoned her party’s founding principles not me. It was her who turned her back on core party supporters and values, not me.

Be an adult and accept the voters decision for what it is, with grace, and not with petulance and wrath.

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Canadians have recently been witness to the sad and now seemingly irreversible devolution of the CBC, fueled both by ongoing and deep government funding cuts and betrayal from within. Star reader Kevin Caners of Brockville reflects on the implications of this Harper-led assault on Canadian icons in this perceptive letter:

Re: CBC plan could cripple public broadcaster, June 25

As someone who cares deeply about this country, I can’t fully express how much despair it fills me with to watch as the CBC — one of the few forums we have as Canadians to both connect and reflect our culture and society — is systematically dismantled.

From the CBC to Canada Post, isn’t it symbolic that as we tear up the few remaining avenues we have as Canadians to communicate literally and metaphorically with each other, the Conservatives are busy with their vision of what it means to build a country — namely constructing pipelines to pump oil from one part of the country to another.

What an utterly sad thought that our message to our children, and the world, is that the thing we care most about connecting as a nation is not our communities, our aspirations, and our citizens, but our dirty oil, with export markets. Surely we have the imagination and confidence to see ourselves as something more than climate change deniers and hewers of bitumen.

I hardly recognize this Canada any longer. And it pains me to recognize what we’ve already lost in our haste. My only hope is that we Canadians who still believe in this country, start organizing now to make sure that the Conservatives’ sad impoverished vision for this country, comes to an end as of April 2015.

And then the true work of building a society — through our arts, culture and understanding of one another — can start anew. Time to get working.