Conservatives will move us backwards

DEAR EDITOR:

Erin O’Toole casts himself as an agent for change But what he doesn’t say is that it will be a change backwards to austere mercantile small government that puts profits before people.

The Conservative corporate brain-trust was angry, when the Liberals chose to steer relief directly to Canada’s human capital by keeping ordinary Canadians financially whole during the pandemic, instead of focusing solely on corporations and businesses.

Hence, it was no surprise that O’Toole’s five-point Recovery COVID relief plan promises to do exactly what Liberals chose not to do: give more corporate tax breaks and a new 50% corporate and business subsidy program for new salaries or wages.

And another, rather foolhardy, point in his COVID recovery plan is based upon unrealistic utopian libertarian interpretation about personal freedom; O’Toole’s plan will not require Conservative candidate to be vaccinated, so under his recovery plan the unvaccinated will continue to pose a threat to the health of all Canadians.

The universal $10-per-day child care program the provinces are willingly signing up for will end under O’Toole’s plan and be replaced by a 75% tax credit program that require families to earn enough income to qualify to receive the credit. This is the kind of typical corporatist thinking that constantly comes from Conservatives — pandering solely to the payers-of-tax, and excluding low income families (40% of Canadians) who do not earn enough to actually pay any income tax.

Conservative scuttlebutt claims Canadians have become lazy from too much CERB-relief and don’t want to work. But what is not mentioned is that jobs like health care, hospitality service staff and agricultural workers are all lowpaying jobs that require long hours, come with no benefits and commands little respect from most employers.

What is interesting about the lessons of COVID we’ve learned is that not only did relief help ordinary Canadians financially survive, but it also revealed to them how poorly their labour was valued by their employers, so when given a choice to look for better prospects, is it any wonder they are reluctant to go back to a job that doesn’t value them?

A Conservative government will move us backwards to an outdated corporatist mercantile agenda and end Canada’s progressive march forward started with the Liberals victory in 2015.

Not only does the Conservative plan not address our biggest existential threat, climate change, they don’t even admit its real. Jon Peter Christoff West Kelowna