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Time for a major political change

Re: ‘Just a different type of puppet’ (Your Letters, PQB News , Aug. 20)
18297812_web1_PQN-Letters

Re: ‘Just a different type of puppet’ (Your Letters, PQB News, Aug. 20)

Cheers for Bernie Smith, who showed us the ludicrous side of politics.

My views are less sardonic, more dismayed. A recent circular from our local MP lists the policies he supports, all good and achievable if the funding is available, but with two signal absences that just got my goat.

First there was no mention of a possible alternative electoral system. Is his party now backing away from the idea? Then I realized that basic revision of the totally privatized funding scheme for governments, which for 40 years has cemented continually growing but utterly un-payable debts and their crippling interest charges (now roughly 9% of federal budgets, the lowest in decades) is not even contemplated by either of the three major parties.

These are clearly bought silences. The ever-mounting debts in every jurisdiction and under all forms of government over 44 years since abandonment of Bank of Canada loan funding at nil interest; the associated perpetual inflation from creation of new money needed to pay the entirely unproductive interest; the continued failure by all parties previous to the Greens to advocate PR and self-funding from our own bank (like North Dakota and China); all confirm my suspicion of bought parties and policies.

Twenty-odd years ago, publisher Mel Hurtig proposed that a mere $5 fee on every income tax return would produce $75 million annually, pay the total costs of all parties and remove this purchase of influence at a stroke. The silence was deafening.

Since then, unrepresentative governments, stumbling, underfunded or cancelled programs, and a number of very happy major investors, have characterized our politics. Time for a major change, I think.

Russ Vinden

Errington