My Member of Parliament and the other Feds

I’m annoyed with my Canadian Member of Parliament and the sheer amount of propaganda he sends me from the federal parliament. Because he’s an MP and a member of the ruling party, he gets to send these out on the public dime (actually 50 cents or whatever a stamp is worth nowadays). And it is propaganda, allow me to illustrate from the latest update.

After the political rhetoric you’d expect on an issue from Harold Albrecht and his Conservative party, There is a big heading saying “I Value Your Opinion”. Fine, maybe he believes in participatory democracy. Below it says in smaller lettering “Do YOU support these improvements to the Youth Criminal Justice Act??”[There are two question marks on the flier – just thought I’d include them]. Below is a box to check “YES” and a box to check for “NO”.

Uh, if you’re going to answer “NO” to this question you certainly wouldn’t call the changes “improvements”. Obviously Albrecht doesn’t care for the other opinion someone might have. Obviously “I Value Your Opinion” was a lie and he is now a hypocrite.

So here is what I’m going to do about this. Remember that free mailing Albrecht got? Well it’s a two edged sword. My response (where I’m supposed to answer just his questions [there are more boxes]) is also free to send by mail. I’m going to highlight the word “improvements” and the “NO” with the box and say in the margin:

“Yo, Suit [Albrecht appears on the flier three times, in all three appearances he’s wearing a suit], if I were to check “NO” I wouldn’t call these “improvements”. It’s like you DON’T value my opinion and that is harshing my mellow.”

While we’re talking about the ruling Conservative Party, it should be noted that prime minister Stephen Harper is surrounded by three women in the House of Commons. So every time he’s shown on the news, we are allowed to assume that a large percentage of women are in the Conservative Party. Let me tell you up front that is not the proportion of women in the Conservative Party.

The opposition Liberal Party has the same but different idea.. They make sure that every shot of their leader contains Navdeep Bains, a turban wearer, to sell themselves as friendly to minorities and visible minorities. Again the makeup of the Liberal Party doesn’t have a proper representation of visible minorities either. I can accept this better though, because large amounts of visible minorities are recent immigrants and haven’t developed their power capital yet.

But really I think Navdeep Bains looks like one of those eastern mystics from the ’20s and ’30s who wore turbans and hypnotized people. So every time he is seen behind Michael Ignatieff is another chance for him to hypnotize Canadians into voting Liberal. “How’s that going to go?” you ask. Just wait till the next election.