To The Editor,
Reading recent letters to the editor in The Review and elsewhere, my reaction was – please don’t waste taxpayer money on a provincial by-election! Come on, with about 70% of the riding being Francophone, who do you think would win? Which party would ruin its chances of getting elected in 2022 by running against French services?
But I agree that accountability of our politicians is important, so here is my proposal. Amanda Simard should post an on-line questionnaire with a few simple YES / NO questions, as follows. What is your postal code? Did you vote for me in the general election? Would you vote for me if a by-election were held? Do you agree with my decision to vote for the NDP motion, against the changes to French services proposed by Doug Ford? Do you agree with my decision to leave the PC caucus to sit as an independent? Do you think I should cross the floor and become a Liberal?
The results would be a public service by indicating the degree of public opposition or support, in a fairly objective way. Having postal codes prevents any group from the electronic version of stuffing the ballot box, because the numbers can be cross-referenced to local poll results.
The last question would be a deal-breaker for me. It is one thing to follow her conscience and sit as an independent based on this issue, but joining the Liberals so they could get official party status would be a betrayal of all the other Conservative policies she campaigned on.
Except, she did not publicly campaign on them, did she? My final comment is to PC voters. If you have been complaining about her accountability on this issue, to your neighbours, on social media, or in a letter to the editor … where were you when she boycotted all the public candidate debates during the election? Did you complain about her lack of accountability at that time? Did you write a letter to the editor encouraging her to show up and debate in public? Did you vote for her anyway? If so, you got what you voted for.
David Sherwood, Ste-Anne-de-Prescott
