An Open Letter To Stephen Harper
There is a site where Canadians can send a letter to the Prime Minister asking him to recall Parliament and discuss whether or not to join America in joining the rebels in the Syrian civil war. I made significant changes to the letter before i sent it. I want to share it openly.
Dear Prime Minister Harper, opposition leaders, and my MP,
I am deeply concerned about the civil war in Syria. Governments around the world are deciding whether or not to support possible US military action. The UK parliament has just voted to wait and let the UN weapons inspectors do their job. Even President Obama has decided to consult Congress. The Canadian government is not even considering such a debate. It is imperative to recall our MPs back to Ottawa immediately for an open debate on Canada’s involvement in the conflict.
Canadians overwhelmingly support peacekeeping, not war mongering, and Canadians have not given this government a mandate to get us into a messy war in the Middle East with consequences unknown, except for one thing.
Our current national debt is over $616 Billion! This is up by roughly two hundred billion from the low that it reached under PM Paul Martin, thanks largely to your military adventures on America's behalf. Only you, Mr Harper, could even think of committing Canada to another hugely expensive shooting war now. The actions of Syria's government against its own civilians are abominable and we ought to help if we could, but our ability to afford to help is dubious at this point. We should at the least debate the matter in parliament among all the members.
I ask you to recall parliament now to discuss this crisis. At least help the UN weapons inspectors find the time they need to finish their work so that we can hear their report and judge accordingly.
For the record, I am shocked and disgusted by the chemical attack and the napalm attack which followed it against civilian targets which Bashar al-Assad launched. If he'd been able to insire that only rebel fighters had been harmed by them -- and he could not have, nobody could -- I would still have been horrified and disgusted that such agents had been used at all. Assuming that investigation proves that these attacks were real and that they were indeed launched by the government as the rebels claim, (and al-Assad's counter claims don't make sense -- Where would the rebels get such weapons?), it would be right for the rest of the world to launch a reprimand with corporal force against him and his army. My sympathies are mainly with the innocent civilians of Syria.
However, and for the record, Canada is not in a good position to be a part of this reprimand. We have an enormous deb! As of writing, each of us owe more than $17,500! And under the Right Honourable Prime Minister of Alberta, it's only getting worse. As for our military, we can't even afford to replace our aging Sea King helicopters, never mind our CF18 fighters or those dodgy Oberon submarines Mother England stuck us with. And Stephen Harper wants so badly to push us into yet another shooting war that not only is he not calling an emergency session of parliament to discuss the matter, he's proroguing parliament yet again to make sure that such a discussion never happens! (The only time when our Parlaiment was prorogued before Mr Harper was in 1873, when Sir John A tried to kill The Pacific Scandal hearings. The Governor General did allow the prorogation, but limited it to ten weeks and appointed a commission to continue the hearings anyway. When Parliament reconvened, Sir John A was censured and forced to resign. This will be the third time Mr Harper has prorogued parliament.) Given our financial situation, we should at least discuss the matter in open parliament.
You help those in need if you can. In this little otter's opinion, we can't.
PS. Here's a site were you can donate to UNICEF. :)
Dear Prime Minister Harper, opposition leaders, and my MP,
I am deeply concerned about the civil war in Syria. Governments around the world are deciding whether or not to support possible US military action. The UK parliament has just voted to wait and let the UN weapons inspectors do their job. Even President Obama has decided to consult Congress. The Canadian government is not even considering such a debate. It is imperative to recall our MPs back to Ottawa immediately for an open debate on Canada’s involvement in the conflict.
Canadians overwhelmingly support peacekeeping, not war mongering, and Canadians have not given this government a mandate to get us into a messy war in the Middle East with consequences unknown, except for one thing.
Our current national debt is over $616 Billion! This is up by roughly two hundred billion from the low that it reached under PM Paul Martin, thanks largely to your military adventures on America's behalf. Only you, Mr Harper, could even think of committing Canada to another hugely expensive shooting war now. The actions of Syria's government against its own civilians are abominable and we ought to help if we could, but our ability to afford to help is dubious at this point. We should at the least debate the matter in parliament among all the members.
I ask you to recall parliament now to discuss this crisis. At least help the UN weapons inspectors find the time they need to finish their work so that we can hear their report and judge accordingly.
For the record, I am shocked and disgusted by the chemical attack and the napalm attack which followed it against civilian targets which Bashar al-Assad launched. If he'd been able to insire that only rebel fighters had been harmed by them -- and he could not have, nobody could -- I would still have been horrified and disgusted that such agents had been used at all. Assuming that investigation proves that these attacks were real and that they were indeed launched by the government as the rebels claim, (and al-Assad's counter claims don't make sense -- Where would the rebels get such weapons?), it would be right for the rest of the world to launch a reprimand with corporal force against him and his army. My sympathies are mainly with the innocent civilians of Syria.
However, and for the record, Canada is not in a good position to be a part of this reprimand. We have an enormous deb! As of writing, each of us owe more than $17,500! And under the Right Honourable Prime Minister of Alberta, it's only getting worse. As for our military, we can't even afford to replace our aging Sea King helicopters, never mind our CF18 fighters or those dodgy Oberon submarines Mother England stuck us with. And Stephen Harper wants so badly to push us into yet another shooting war that not only is he not calling an emergency session of parliament to discuss the matter, he's proroguing parliament yet again to make sure that such a discussion never happens! (The only time when our Parlaiment was prorogued before Mr Harper was in 1873, when Sir John A tried to kill The Pacific Scandal hearings. The Governor General did allow the prorogation, but limited it to ten weeks and appointed a commission to continue the hearings anyway. When Parliament reconvened, Sir John A was censured and forced to resign. This will be the third time Mr Harper has prorogued parliament.) Given our financial situation, we should at least discuss the matter in open parliament.
You help those in need if you can. In this little otter's opinion, we can't.
PS. Here's a site were you can donate to UNICEF. :)