Re.: The Electoral Dilemma
A friend of mine indicated that he would like to vote for a certain candidate if he only ran for another party.
This demonstrates the dilemma the voting public is faced with, to either vote for a party or a candidate.
Often enough the two do not go hand in hand with a voter's preference.
As indicated earlier none of the ‘Big Three' to me is worth the salt in the soup. This leaves the other criteria to look at, the individual candidates.
Incumbent Richards runs on the economy and being tough on crime. On both, I suggest, Mr. Richards has little if any influence under the iron sceptre of Mr. Harper other than to show his hand when hands are needed to be shown.
Worse, he promotes lower taxes and at the same time balancing the budget, amounting to a squaring of the circle.
No mention of the federal debt of over half a trillion dollars, servicing of which is taking up 11 per cent of the budget.
While paying down the debt would be the sole sound approach, this takes vision and a long- term plan going beyond election cycles.
So it is not in the cards by neither party.
Mr. Richards claims to have worked hard. Well, Mr. Richards has worked hard to represent his government in his constituency. My experience has been that he does not particularly well represent his constituents in Ottawa.
Among several issues I brought to the attention of Mr. Richards were the lives of several people which were absolutely, but wrongfully, destroyed by Revenue Canada (web search Irvin Leroux) currently before the courts in B.C. and the cases of John Marsden and Wes Kelly, both of Ontario and covered by W5 in ‘A nightmare when the taxman got it wrong'. Web search it also for an eyeopener.
Being a small business owner myself I asked Mr. Richards what he and his government were going to do about this. The lack of an answer indicated ‘nothing!'
On the other side we have some controversial comments from John Reilly. But you know what? Once I looked at Reilly's quantification and his statement in full it had lost much of its controversy.
Only taken out of context was it inflammatory.
One of his recommendations as judge in a public inquiry in 1999 reads: ‘Legislate honesty in the public sector.' Now that is a statement carrying weight.
If this remains his position he should be carried to Ottawa on the shoulders of the public. As long as we have corrupt and arrogant administrations on all levels of government of questionable honesty, integrity and competence this state rests on a rotten foundation.
And what tipped the scale for me was his statement that he was running for the Liberal Party but that he was not run by the Liberal Party. Superb!
This is the kind of independent mind we need on the Hill. This to me makes him electable also for non-Liberals and when I see the Liberal logo on his sign I just look the other way.
Dieter Remppel
Canmore, Alta.
