Wishing You All A Happy Harper-less Holiday Season

From Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

December 24^th, 2015

From me and my family to you and yours, here’s hoping you have a Holiday Season full of peace and warmth with people you love to be around – even if some of that has to be done through calls to loved ones far away.

That’s all I really want this Holiday Season. I have enough stuff and as for anything else, I got what I wanted this past October 19^th when enough votes came in from across Canada to spell the end of a decade of the worst government this country has had in generations going back to the end of the Second World War.

I look back at this year we are about to say goodbye to with a sense of pride for any small role I may have played as a poster of commentary on Niagara At Large calling for an end to a Harper government that has weakened our economy at home and tarnished our reputation as an environmental leader and as a voice for tolerance and peace around the world.

Watching broadcasts of our new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, receiving applause from other world leaders at the Paris Climate Summit this passing December, just for declaring that “Canada is back,” left me feeling proud and embarrassed for our country at the same time.

It’s as if he had to say something like that given how brazenly Harper and company had cut the legs from under the values Canada had once so proudly stood for on the world stage. But how sad it is that he had to say it.

Every time I write things like this about Harper, I get at least a few people who supported him and his party insisting that his Conservatives were the only party that could be counted on to run the country’s economy.

When I get a chance to respond to these people, I ask them if they have mutual funds or an investment portfolio and if so, do they direct whoever is looking after it for them to invest the bulk of their money in the oil industry. Of course not, they say. Everyone knows you are better off investing in a number of things in case one of those things falls flat.

Everyone should know that. It’s Economics 101!

And yet here we had Harper’s gang investing so much in the tar sands. And look at the mess we are in now that the bubble has burst, and we have a tanking dollar and inflating costs for groceries, clothes and other products we are importing, because we are hardly making anything here anymore.

Yet even now, we have what’s left of the Harper bunch, through their new interim leader Rona Ambrose, pressing the new government to go on subsidizing the oil sector to the tune of billions of dollars that should be invested in alternative sources of energy If these people were in charge a hundred years ago, they’d l be subsidizing horse shoes and buggy whip factories while the rest of the world was moving to cars.

We should all be thankful this Holiday Season that they are no longer in charge as we get down to the job of building a country that works in this 21^st Century to improve the quality of life for all Canadians.

There is a New Year’s resolution we should all work together as a country to keep.

Two thumbs up for the best campaign for Canada this passing year. How thankful we should all be that it was successful.

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