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Conservatives have learned nothing

Dear Editor,

Have these Conservatives learned nothing since the Dark Age Under Harper? Are they still mired in the anti-intellectual, anti -science, anti -people miasma of that era?

Recently Erin O’Toole, a shadow Foreign Affairs Minister who has yet to emerge from that shadowy time, offered “non-partisan” support for the negotiations provided the Conservative partisan priorities were protected and all the more imminent and the neglected issues were ignored.

O’Toole would support the negotiations provided that the First Nations are once again shunted to the “back of the bus:” provided gender issues are ignored: provided environmental concerns are downplayed: provided climate change is not a consideration. And provided that we follow the same neoliberal economic doctrines that have shifted the vast bulk of the economic pie to the wealthy.

Social discrimination and economic discrimination.

This despite the devastation that is already being wrought around the world by climate change. Despite the growing realization that it is already costing Canada billions of dollars annually.  Despite the environmental destruction that Trump in the US is making a centrepiece of his “policy.”

There is very little time left to save Canada and the world from the worst effects of climate change. Are we to wait until climate refugees from all over the world are pouring into Canada’s empty spaces? Until millions are dying? Canada is now experiencing unprecedented wildfires and floods, coastal erosion and other early signs of the approaching crises.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. O’Toole plays political games while our forests burn.

There is an old adage that says, “In politics, a fool is more dangerous than a villain and must be treated as a villain.” Never was it more apposite than in its application to these Conservatives who are concerned only with the conserving of their own privileges.

John Peate

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