Re: ‘Thanks Stilwell for your hard work’ (letter to the editor in the July 12 edition of The NEWS, written by Craig Dutton.)
I do not know what world the writer lives in, but it is far removed from people who endure lives of quiet desperation, existing on incomes that condemn them to poverty and destitution.
Personally, I would find it very hard to thank Minister Michelle Stilwell for the years of living in fear and hardship under her ministry’s rule. Coerced by her staff to apply for early Canada Pension Plan payments, with ministry letters threatening to terminate my only income for non-compliance, I never slept for months. It made no difference to Stilwell that I have a chronic anxiety disorder and the fear of ministry retribution almost put me in hospital. And I really don’t think that the Paralympic athlete cares about the fact that her policy reduces my CPP for life, even when I am no longer a client under her ministry’s tyranny.
And I do not think that PWD clients on CPP-Disability will be shaking her hand when Stilwell takes away the income that they sweated over for years. When she sentences them to life on $906 a month or less, she robs them of any opportunity to make their lives better. But then the glow of her medals probably distracts her from the horrors of life of many disabled citizens under her rule.
Here are my definitions of some words Dutton used in his letter. Zealot: someone whose ideology blinds them to human suffering. Bully: anyone who knowingly causes harm to someone who is medically fragile. Are you listening, Stilwell?
Doreen Marion Gee
Victoria