Bambi is allowing herself to write this post as an open letter to Mr. Dominic Leblanc, President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada:
https://pm.gc.ca/en/cabinet/honourable-dominic-leblanc
She is doing so because she has considered that he is perhaps “the brain” of the Liberal Party of Canada. He is not only intelligent. He is SURELY one of our MOST competent federal politicians…This is clear in her mind. She has even wished he would have won the leadership of his party a few years ago, not Mr. Trudeau… He would have been our PM now ?.
Thank you for your 18-year-long service to Canada, even if you may be at times controversial to some (we cannot please everyone in politics, just like in life. A leader must not aim to please all, but rather to earn everyone’s respect).
On a more personalized citizen level, Bambi has voted for you, Mr. Leblanc, almost all her NB life (12 years in August, 2020).
She could have easily done so during the last electoral campaign. She did not.
Almost a year before the electoral campaign, she made up her mind and it was like a grieving process to her: She will not be voting for you. No, not because she suddenly started to find you less competent.
It was rather because of your boss (colleague and close friend), Mr. Trudeau.
Because of a lack of clever leadership, along with a rather collective stupidity in our country, and by extension perhaps in the Western world in general, Bambi became worried about Canada.
Today, more than ever, she is concerned. This is why she is writing to you.
For Bambi, writing is a pleasure. The pleasure of the actual writing process for sure, but also the joy of sharing to confront our ideas. The latter is all what we have left in life when everything else would be lost or killed. It is called freedom.
See, Bambi considers herself as a free thinker, a classical liberal. So, it was only logical to find herself voting for the Liberal Party of Canada for decades. She has been faithful to that vote almost ALL her 30 years in Canada, except when your party cheated with the sponsorship scandal (time at which she voted for the New Democratic party) and recently, she voted for the People’s Party of Canada.
In the name of those so-called liberal values, she is writing to you today to express her disappointment and beg your government to come back to its sense with regard to the following: Please stop any bill “against Covid-19 misinformation”. Bambi does not buy it. Although she may be wrong, she thinks that this is a mere political move for more power (= less freedom) in our country (in the name of covid-19). This is not healthy power. This is a risky slippery slope.
Citizens are not idiots, Mr. Leblanc. Even if they are not trained lawyers like you, they recognize odd laws when they see them.
Citizens who come from China (my friends in Toronto) or Lebanon (my friends in Montreal) left their home countries, aspiring for the freedom of the Western world. Please do not disappoint them. They and we all deserve better.
We deserve an open country where we can debate ideas and express emotions.
As Mr. Anthony Furey wrote well in the first article below:
“It’s widely known that Health Minister Patty Hadju, Dr. Theresa Tam and other officials have now done complete reversals on many aspects of this illness. They previously told Canadians that the risk remained low and that COVID-19 did not spread asymptomatically. Then there was their insistence that flight restrictions and widespread usage of face masks did not work, only for them to turn around and voice opposite policies.
Everyone understands that there’s a steep and frequently changing learning curve when it comes to getting a firm handle on all the aspects of COVID-19. But if the public is expected to cut officials some slack, the government should extend the same courtesy to the public.”
Like Mr. Furey, Bambi strongly believes in learning curves. Her blog is a little example. She thinks about matters out loud, so to speak. Perhaps a month or a year from now, with new external input and new thoughts, she would likely see an evolution of her own thoughts. She may perhaps question them or laugh at them. She may perhaps think to herself: “Oh no, that is still valid” or “OK I was wrong on that one”, etc.
Please let my fellow Canadian citizens have that freedom to question themselves and others, to share their ideas, even the craziest. Trust that other readers will have the critical judgment to know what makes sense or not.
In relation to this topic, as described in an earlier article in La Presse entitled “federal money to fight disinformation”, “among the selected entities, we can find the professional federation of journalists in Québec ($330 164) and the Asian Environmental Association ($64 660), which fights misinformation in communities speaking Chinese and Vietnamese languages in Vancouver.”:
Can’t that money above ($394 824) serve to buy PPE to protect those citizens rather or their elders, etc.? For instance, journalists will need PPE to keep us informed. Citizens in Vancouver who may be served by this “Asian environmental association” would also benefit from PPE or from more urgent matters in pandemic times (perhaps local food banks, etc.).
Can you please reassure us that we are strictly serving Canadian citizens with initiatives like the above, without any collusion with a (Chinese) government they left behind to live more freely in Canada.
With Mr. Trudeau’s vision for Canada, we have all the rights to ask for this reassurance.
Thank you. Be safe please. Be well.
By the way, on a more human level, you do not know it but Bambi has sent you positive vibes and even prayed for your wellness when you have been sick. She is happy to know you are doing well.
She is reading your Twitter, from time to time, during this pandemic. She appreciates all the helpful links, both federal and provincial.
Best wishes to our beloved Canada!