‘Dear Mr. Martin, Can you cut down the gas price?’

PM gets blizzard of cranky emails Half want price controls imposed

OTTAWA— As gasoline prices spiked in late summer, so did the anger of ordinary Canadians — and hundreds of them tried to contact Prime Minister Paul Martin to blast him personally.

Telephone records, letters, petitions and emails sent to the prime minister, obtained under the Access to Information Act, show a cranky citizenry convinced the oil companies have been gouging the country.

“ Some criminals wear masks and rob the local Mac’s Milk. Other criminals wear Armani suits and rob us blind for essential commodities such as oil,” said one correspondent, echoing a widely shared view. The writers, whose names have been blacked out to protect their privacy, come from all regions of Canada but are by no means a cross-section of the population.

Instead, they’re mostly on the economic fringes: retirees, students, hard-pressed families, rural residents, all of whom say they’re struggling to cope with soaring gas prices. Many say they’re fearful of the approaching winter, and the price they’ll be paying to stay warm.

“ I’m so discouraged, I could cry sometimes from feeling so taken advantage of, so unheard, so vulnerable,” says one of 1,450 messages received in August and September on gas prices.

Roughly half the correspondents wanted the prime minister to impose price controls, creating a made- in- Canada price reflecting the fact the country is an oil exporter. Most of the rest wanted Martin to roll back taxes on gasoline. Many of the letters are articulate and thoughtful, and some go on for pages to make their arguments. Others are concise.

“ Dear Mr. Martin, Can you cut down the gas price?” is the terse, single- line request of one email. Many are addressed to “ Paul,” though at least one calls him “ Mr. Dithers.” Some are aggressively disrespectful.

“ If you want to get re- elected you better do something to get in touch with real Canadians and I don’t mean kissing babies; if I was one I would throw up all over you!” reads one email.

Says another: “ You are in my mind a waste of hair and skin.”

Others tried overt threats to get the prime minister to act.

“ If I do not receive any notice of what you are willing to do to help out your country by August 20th, 2005, I will begin a hunger strike.” No word on whether that vow was ever carried out. One person thought Martin should experience the cold firsthand, at his official residence in Ottawa. “If I had my way, I would cut off the power and fuel to 24 Sussex Drive.”

Still others attempted to tug at Martin’s heartstrings.

“ How can I look at my beautiful son and tell him that Mommy can’t tuck you in at night or be here for dinner as I have to work because of the gas prices?” amother wrote. Many writers warned that sustained higher oil prices could easily tip the country into a recession or worse, though one person’s phrasing was a little off:

“ Please lower the ( gas) tax or you will be the prime minister of a very depressed country.” Most of the emails arrived in late August and early September, as gasoline prices spiked in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Most of the letters and emails received a stock response — “Please be assured that the statements you made have been carefully reviewed” — and many were forwarded to Industry Minister David Emerson’s office, which is responsible for preventing price fixing.