Cornwall letter to the editor, 25 May 2024

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Information over partisans

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Re: “A government leader not personally responsible for complex failures”, 18 May 2024, “Comments on housing show a need for education” and opinion page columns, 21 May 2024.

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Community Editorial Board member Alex Gatien’s recent column was quite remarkable.

Here’s someone applying common sense to a politically charged topic. If only other news outlets and regular media contributors would follow this superb example, we might begin to appreciate the work our elected members of parliament do.

Take for example two columns, one by Brian Lilley, the other by Lorrie Goldstein. The first words in their columns are adverse criticism of the prime minister. Like Tasha Kheiridden, another partisan contributor, they write as if they are the unelected opposition to the government just looking for things to criticize. The poison spread by ignorant observers and members of opposition parties, elected or not, does nothing to enhance the value of democracy.

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Essentially, any criticism should be based on a modicum of factual evidence, not emotion.

Furthermore, these people fail to understand that a democratically elected government is made up of a team of elected members, not just one person. In the same vein, Tom Spears, another columnist, foolishly attacked the government for no reason to bring in skilled immigrants because they will build new homes that the government (according to Spear’s crazy thinking) shouldn’t be building.

As an environmentalist, Spears should be looking for ways to solve the current environmental disaster, not just blaming others for what’s happening — he’s also participating in the climate problem. By now we should all know everything we do, everything we have, everything we wear, everything we eat – it all creates carbon dioxide.

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We don’t want to stop doing what we’re doing, and governments around the globe, including our own, are looking for solutions. If each of the critics, along with Pierre Poilievre, applied their energies to finding ways to combat the problem of climate change, perhaps we could find a solution.

As the leader of the official opposition admitted, there are alternatives to the carbon tax, but they are more expensive. Cement manufacturing, cattle feedlots, landfills, internal combustion engine cars—all mass production processes are major sources of greenhouse gases. They all contribute to the atmospheric disaster we face, but they are part of our lives.

These very facts could be the building blocks for creating alternative ways of thinking – and doing. We need to engage with them to solve our problems.

A great example of using facts to our advantage comes from Hugo Rodrigues. He looked at the facts, showed how they are misused, and then painted a gorgeous picture of reality.

Gatien and Rodrigues’ excellent fact-based writing offers a clear lesson to the public, many wrong-thinking columnists and municipal politicians, about how to look at something and consider all the elements: not just the bad stuff.

John E. Milnes

Cornwall

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