Complaints ring shallow
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I read with interest a recent newspaper article with the heading “Liberal leader says Tories could change Canada beyond recognition.” The surprising thing is that the complaints that Opposition Leader Ignatieff is making against the ruling Conservative government are complaints that reasonably could have been made against all recent federal Liberal governments.
Some of Michael Ignatieff complaints were:
Senate patronage — If Mr. Ignatieff’s Liberal party had not followed the practice of making patronage appointments to the Senate during their extended tenure as the governing party of Canada, I wonder how the Liberals have obtained such a majority of members in the Senate? Even after the recent appointment of 18 Conservatives to the Senate, the Liberal members still outnumber the Conservatives by 53 to 48. Perhaps Mr. Ignatieff forgets that, of Prime Minister Cretien’s 75 appointments to the Senate, 72 were Liberals and the other three were independents. The only change that I see here is that Prime Minister Harper waited to fill the Senate vacancies until it became obvious that Senate reform, which the Conservatives were advocating, was not in the cards.
“All adversaries are enemies, all methods are fair.” — While Mr. Ignatieff is no doubt referring to recent Tory attack ads which depict him as an intellectual who is just visiting Canada, he conveniently forgets about the past Liberal ads that depicted then opposition leader Stephen Harper as the “boogeyman” who could not be trusted and had a “personal agenda.”
“All public money is available for partisan purposes.” — It is hard to believe that this complaint comes from the current leader of the party that was voted out of office due to the sponsorship scandal that took place during their mandate to govern.
Broken Tory promises — Mr. Ignatieff has obviously forgotten about Liberal Prime Minister Chretien’s failed promise to eliminate the GST or possibly he was working out of the country at the time and missed it.
Based on Mr. Ignatieff’s complaints, I can only conclude that he either has a failing memory or his reasoning capabilities are suspect for such a renowned intellectual. Or possibly, he feels that the general public has no reasoning powers, and can be duped into believing anything that comes out of the mouths of politicians?
While the voting public may welcome the change in Canadian politics that Mr. Ignatieff so obviously fears, from my observations to date, I can only conclude that it is currently business as usual.
D C Bergman
Penticton
Council lacks leadership
How can supporters of the retention of our city-owned Munson Mountain properties (McIvor, Manuel, Ross, Wood et al) be so naive to think our current council has the collective vision to accept the recommendations of their own parks advisory board and the asset committee.
They should expect no support from Coun. Pearce. As mayor of a previous council, if he had had his way, we would now have an apartment-hotel on the site of the now prestigious Okanagan Lake Park. It was saved from this ignominious proposal by the vigorous actions of a group of concerned citizens. As for Mayor Ashton, you can expect about as much support as you might receive from any other Summerland resident.
As for the other five, let us hope they have an attack of vision and foresight.
Ben Amos
Penticton
Photo rekindles memories
When I saw the photo of Jo-Anne Birch with a grin almost as big as her metal locator, it brought back memories of when a buddy of mine and I sat up half the night winding coils of different diameters and different inductance to come up with the last word in search coils.
But we had fun — actually more than that — to trek through old mine sites as far as Barkerville was a fascinating outing we tried to do every summer. Even to grub through a pile of rusted-out tin cans beside where a miner’s cabin once stood leaves you with a feeling of having stepped back in history. A good feeling about our exciting past — fraught with hardship and danger in the lust for that precious metal — gold.
Enough of that, but I love this province and I got carried away when Jo-Anne took me back many years to when I was young and could trek through the hills. But at 88, those are only fond memories. Hey, how about if some of you metal locator enthusiasts email me at jonsig@hotmail.com.
Jon Eiriksson
Penticton
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