An Open Letter to Mr. Pierre Lemieux, MP for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell

The following is a letter I sent to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, and two local newspapers after I received yet another piece of Conservative propaganda from my Conservative Member of Parliament, Mr. Pierre Lemieux. I do not know yet if they will be published or not, but if nothing else at least it is out there on the world wide web.

Mr Lemieux,

I have recently received a copy of your “ten percenter”, in which you took it upon yourself to inform me and presumably, 10% of our riding about how long Michael Ignatieff has spent living abroad. You also declared that Mr. Ignatieff would surely return to the US if he is not elected… an interesting conclusion considering that he still stuck around after losing the Liberal leadership race in 2006.

Even though I find your party's constant use of attack ads to be a sad attempt to divert attention from your own inability to handle the economic crisis, that is your choice to make and I have no quarrel with it. Just the same, I must ask that you refrain from using my tax dollars to do so.

As a duly elected MP, you certainly have a right, if not a duty to keep me informed of what's going on in Ottawa; however, these ads are obviously partisan propaganda and have no informative value whatsoever. I want to know about what your government is doing to get E.I. checks issued to the thousands of Canadians that have lost their jobs due to the economic crisis, I want to know what you're doing to stimulate job creation, and what kind of strategy are you developing to help preserve the environment. That kind of information would be most useful.

If you want to spend your own money or your party's money to try and convince me that people such as Michael Ignatieff, Wayne Gretzky, Céline Dion and thousands of other Canadians are less Canadian than you and I because they spent time living abroad, then please be my guest.

Sincerely

Brian Fisher