A letter to Stephen Harper

Today I wrote a letter to Stephen Harper who, at the earliest opportunity, is going to bring down the government. Someone must stop him. I tried to be polite and not let my distrust (and okay, dislike) of the man show through. Did I succeed? You be the judge. (I'm not hopeful that it will do any good. The last time I wrote him about something, he never even acknowledged my email.) Here's the letter:


Dear Mr. Harper,

With the testimony coming out in the Gomery inquiry, it is evident that the political system in Canada is broken.
- Taxpayer's money is not accounted for.
- MP's and cabinet ministers curry favour with their friends using government (taxpayer's) money.
- Ordinary citizens become millionaires at the public trough (i.e. taxpayer's wallet).
- Campaign workers are rewarded with plum jobs at taxpayer's expense.
- All and sundry lie, cheat and steal at taxpayer's expense and there is no mechanism of checks and balances to prevent, uncover or punish this in a timely manner.
- The system that we trust to give us good government is at the mercy of political parties.

I could go on but you know all of these things already. And I am troubled.

I hear you saying that you want to force an election, possibly as early as next week. I hear you saying that this government doesn't deserve to be in power. I hear you saying that the Liberals need to be swept away.

What troubles me is that I have not heard you say anything about how you would fix the system, what you would to to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

What is needed now, Mr. Harper, is for a man of vision - you, perhaps - to come up with ideas on what can be done to fix the system. We need someone of vision to make parliament work. You are in a position to extract much from the government, to make things work as you think they ought and to do much good for Canada. It has long been my opinion that minority government is the best government for the country.

The people elected a minority government last year and that's what we still want. We want you to make it work. We want the people we elected to talk, to discuss, to negotiate, and to come up with the best plan for this country. We do not want you spending another half a billion dollars just so you can replace Paul Martin as the head of a broken system.

You have an opportunity here to effect real change, to be a man of vision that Canada needs more than anything right now. I am sorry to say that so far, Mr. Harper, all I see is another politician - and we have far too many of those already - who is eager to spend even more of the taxpayer's money to further his own political agenda.

Signed,
A sad taxpayer.