Survival-of-thefittest politics

Dear Editor:

To the Courier staff, while your zeal to report is commendable, there are some cases when no means no, boys. Happy to hear from Harper?

The man didn’t want press. How rude of you to feature him on the front page, headlined and in colour.

To be sure, the man is an expert on trade and global affairs. After all, before his stint as prime minister, he had not been out of Canada. His announcement to deprive seniors of the OAS for an additional two years was made from Davos, Switzerland — not in Canada.

He did, however, travel with his own taxpayer-funded hair stylist in a jet repainted in Conservative colours. In spite of lowering corporate tax, no pipelines were built to convey our oil to any coast. Several trade agreements were initiated over a nine year period, none ratified.

As to the bad trade deal with China, his deals with China included Sinopec and the sale of Calgary-based Nexen to China National Offshore Oil Corporation , with China being granted the right to sue for unlimited damages if domestic Canadian laws harmed the value of Chinese investment here.

The Harper government took a $13 billion surplus and within months, turned it into a 456 billionVdeficit before there was even the smell of a recession. So much for the “balanced budget” mantra.

They were only able to achieve that $1.7 billion surplus in time for the 2015 election by selling off every asset, cutting funds to every government agency, including our veteran’s affairs offices, selling embassies abroad, unloading GM shares at a loss to taxpayers of $3.5 billion and even taking $3.4 billion from the employment insurance operating surplus.

When he was done with Canada we did not recognize it ... as he had predicted. Nor did we like it. The man said “no media” — no wonder.

That there were 700 people (literally) buying into his survival-of-the-fittest politics is alarming enough, without giving it added oxygen. Right where? Not now. We have a headache. Elaine Lawrence Kelowna