A Brief Note from Doug Draper
One of the first pages I almost always turn to in any newspaper I pick up is the one hosting letters to the editor.
The reason I’m so hot on letters to the editors that is on almost any given day in a newspaper like The Globe and Mail – one of a dwindling number of good newspapers we have left in Canada – you can find a least one letter that nails it on an issue.
Bodies of drowned Syrian refugees lined up along the Mediterranean shores. Some official estimates place the number of drownings so far this year at more than 2,300 men, women and children.
That was the case this October 9th on an issue The Globe’s investigative staff broke a day earlier on Stephen Harper’s office getting directly involved in the vetting of Syrian refugees feeling from death and destruction in their homeland, and desperately seeking a new home in Canada.
The letter, from David Wood of Mildmay, Ontario is short and right to the point, and reads as follows –
“Stephen Harper and those in the PMO who want to personally conduct Canada’s screening process should be sent at once to the beaches of Turkey, where they’ll find a number of kids face down in the water patiently awaiting this country’s enlightened confirmation that, as refugees, they no longer pose a security threat.”
Enough said, except shame on this Harper government for using a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions to play the worst kind of politics around this humanitarian crisis and for tarnishing a reputation it took Canada generations to earn as a nation of caring people.
This coming October 19th, go out and vote as if the future of our country depends on it.
And last but not least, reward newspapers like The Globe and Mail for investing resources in investigative reporting by subscribing to them.
You can read the October 8th Globe story that revealed the controversial role Harper’s office has played in processing refugee applications by clicking on http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prime-ministers-office-ordered-halt-to-refugee-processing/article26713562/ .
Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.
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Niagara At Large 
Call me a cynic, Doug. OK. I’m a cynic. We have subscribed to the Globe for over 40 years. It is my paper of choice.
As reporters and columnists leave, by choice or edict, all newspapers become less engaged with readers. You know this well. This morning on CBC Radio One, three editors/journalists talked about editorial boards endorsing candidates. Perhaps you heard it.
The Public Editor of the Star said they had an editorial board who made collective decisions. The Buzzfeed.ca woman who spoke admitted to no editorial board. The question was, what influence, if any, does the newspaper endorsement have on readers. To my utter astonishment, the host mentioned that only two percent of Canadians belong to or support a political party, and only 11 percent ever have. They dismissed Postmedia entirely. Where they get the stats, I dunno.
That said, I have repeatedly asked the Globe’s Public Editor Sylvia Stead, to identify who is on the Globe’s Editorial Board, to which the paper refers often. She is “unable to say”. I actually was phoned by the Editor in Chief, David Walmsley in June 2014 as I kept doggedly at that question, since the Globe always endorses Conservatives (most recently Jim Prentice in Alberta, and Hudak in Ontario. OK, privately owned by Reuter-Thomson, they can call the shots. But Walmsley refused to identify the editorial boardto me on a fairly long phone conversation. “It’s complex” he reiterated in that phone call.
So wait for it. Despite the suprising excellent report on Trudeau by Ian Brown last Saturday, and I am sure, the disparing of Mulcair in tomorrow’s Globe, ‘My Globe’, ‘your Globe’ will endorse Harper again. Walmsley overrode his editorial board on Hudak. Well known. He will kowtow to the piper that pays him —the Thomson family.
Dearly hope I am wrong. Just saying.
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If Stephen Harper is so paranoid about letting into Canada certain refugees ,, what’s his excuse for not letting in, any low risk refugees, such as Christians, Yazidi’s and Kurds who are not known ever, for preaching death to America or Canada.???
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I apologize for my garbled ungrammatical typos. Message was strongly felt. Not checked before hitting ‘send’.
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