Editor, The Times:
The other day I was talking to my daughter in Edmonton. She and her partner just moved there last August, just in time to welcome the Socialist hordes to the land of Wild Rose.
“You know Dad,” she said, “Graham and I just received a letter from the Fraser Institute. How did they get our address? There could be something illegal about all of this?”
My daughter, perhaps by osmosis or just the fact that she has lived in places like Japan and India and is very politically aware, has the same 'love' for those distorters of Adam Smith as I do. I've of course expressed this on a number of occasions.
“Here,” she said, “it's short, I'll read this nonsense to you!” The letter began with the expected oh horrors the left-wing marauders not only arrived at the gates but managed to break in.
Oh, what a mistake. Poverty and damnation will surely follow all the days of our lives.
It went on. Alberta has a spending problem — with oil wealth on which royalties definitely should not be raised, there's lots of income (forget that's been virtually cut in half, if not more?) — just cut spending and Alberta will once more return to paradise. All will be well.
Like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, a diamond flashed through my aged brain. A spending problem indeed.
As anyone knows, Gordon Campbell hung on the wisdom of those Burrard Street hooligans — the Fraser Institute.
There's no reason that yoga-on-Burrard-Sreet-Bridge Christy will do it any differently.
A spending problem – just cut cut, cut — education, BC Ferries, forestry, etc. These are all essential to the health and wealth of B.C. But no, don't spend, just cut. The Fraser Institute says so!
In conclusion, my daughter said, “First of all we are going to find out just how the Fraser Institute got our address. Then, and we have been thinking of this for a long time, we are going to start a campaign to have the Fraser Institute's charitable status lifted.”
Well, good luck on that one.
As we know the Harper government's recent witch hunt on charitable status included the Pembina Institute, Council of Canadians, etc. but none of the mouthpieces for big energy such as Fraser, Frontier, MacDonald-Laurier. Wonder why?
A last quote from my daughter, “The Fraser Institute sure as heck doesn't know who they are dealing with!”
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.