I totally disagree with Valerie Axford’s recent letter to the editor ‘Change for the sake of change’ (The NEWS, Sept. 8) in which she implies that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is best qualified to lead us through unstable economic times.
We are now officially back into a recession and he has presided over the most anemic economic growth of any post-WW2 PM (the Globe & Mail, Sept. 1, 2015). And then there’s the $150 billion added to the national debt during his watch and what I believe is the hollowing out of our manufacturing industry, cutbacks to research and development, stealth privatization of healthcare and I could go on. I can’t imagine how any of the other candidates could do any worse.
Then Axford worries about the expense of accepting more refugees asking “where does the money come from to pay for this?” It’ll just be added to the national debt.
Recently, I noticed that the Conservative government has promised up to $100 million more for refugee aid. I wonder how many people are aware that the Middle East refugee situation accelerated after the U.S.-led NATO invasion of Afghanistan and has worsened in recent years. Canada participated in the bombing of Libya and according to Jeffrey Simpson in his column in the Globe & Mail (Feb. 18, 2015) “NATO bombs cleared the path for ISIS in Libya.”
The vast majority of people that the cynically titled “Arab Spring” was supposed to help has turned their lives into a living hell. Egypt is now under the iron rule of an even worse dictator. But he’s an American-approved dictator.
James PatersonParksville
