Betting on Bernier

Re: The Tories’ Low Bar, Kelly McParland; Who Will Make The Home Stretch?, John Ivison, both, Oct. 13.

Kelly McParland tells a joke at the expense of Tory leadership candidate Maxime Bernier, where the punchline is that Bernier has lots of ideas, but most are bad.

Bernier’s announced ideas to date include reducing and flattening income tax and eliminating credits and loopholes, abolishing the capital gains tax, cutting back on the Canadian Radio- television and Telecommunications Commission bureaucracy, ending big government supply management of food, and respecting the constitutional division of powers as a way to make government smaller and more efficient. There isn’t a bad idea in the bunch.

There is a distinct possibility in three years time Canadians will have tired of a prime minister who appears to be incapable of having an idea of his own ( beyond legalizing pot), and will be ready to listen to a candidate with many ideas to improve governance, even if they are not the leftist ones McParland favours.

Jeffrey W. Tighe, Toronto.

So, Tony Cl e ment has thrown in the Conservative leadership towel, leaving a hole in the party that should be easy to fill. Between the cringeworthy blurts of Kellie Leitch and Kevin O’Leary's Montgomery Burns impression, there should be plenty of room for just about anybody to come up the middle.

No political contest should be about charisma. On that score, the charismafree candidates are out in front. Their likability rating is on a par with that of Vlad the Impaler, their collective warmth innocent of any charges of contributing to global warming. Maxime Bernier gets a little more off-the-wall with every anti- Canada Post post and phoney “petition” he throws up on Facebook. So far all he’s promising is to do is take something away.

Daniel J. Christie, Port Hope, Ont.