In a recent comment, Kiashu from Green With A Gun asked me to post the letters I've written and sent to the Premier of Alberta (Ed Stelmach) and the Prime Minister of Canada (Stephen Harper) in the interest of "helping us engage more productively with our elected representatives."So here goes. When I wrote the Premier, I posted about it here. And here is a link to my letter to the Prime Minister, that I have just mailed today. I added a P.S. on the bottom of this letter, saying: "You and your environment minister's conduct at Bali lacked both courage and leadership." Both my husband and I signed the letters.
I guess you could say these letters are quite blunt. While I have respect for the offices these men hold, their conduct has not inspired any respect for them, personally.
I will post a link to the letter we received back from the Premier in a future post - my scanner isn't working and so I have to type it into a document myself. It's a fairly long letter, so that may take me a little while to finish.
If anyone would like to use part or all of these letters in your own letter to the Premier or Prime Minister, please do! We need to let our elected representatives know what we are thinking! Otherwise they proceed on the assumption that 'no news is good news.'
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9 comments:
Those are good letters, clear and evocative. I'll be interested in the responses.
She's right, too, dear readers - we can't complain they're not listening to us if we aren't talking to them! :)
The time and effort to write and send a letter isn't very great. Whatever your concerns, write your local members at each level of government.
Will it do any good to write them? I don't know - but no good will be done if we don't.
Thanks Kyle! I used to just mutter and moan about these things but never say anything. I just can't do that anymore.
It probably took me about an hour and a half to write the first letter, and about half an hour for the second. Once I had my points hashed out in the first one, the second one went faster. Plus, I was a lot more steamed at the time, which you can probably tell.
I like your letters, but it's hard to know whether they will do any good. Sometimes I wonder whether our elected representatives are even the same species as I am.
But to write to them is the right thing to do. As Kiashu says, dialogue means communication between two people.
Thanks for writing. And although you can sometimes feel very alone in fighting the good fight on behalf of our beautiful world, please know in your heart that there are millions of people you've never even seen who are fighting that same fight with you, each in our own way.
It is hard to know if writing them will do any good, but half the time I don't know if anything I do or say to anyone will do any good. But I've reached the point where I have to at least say something. And for some reason I have the idea that if politicians read one letter on a topic, they need to assume that a hundred or even a thousand people are thinking it and didn't write.
And it sure does help to connect with others in other parts of the world fighting and speaking out too!
I really have to start typing in that letter I got back from the premier....I'll go start that right now....
Good luck - and thankyou for doing it! I've been doing the same thing (writing to representatives and the PM from time to time), and it's good to know that I'm not the only one doing it!
I would love to read what you have written to your representatives - could you post some of it on your blog at some point?
Next time I do I will. Currently I have no idea where my letters are, as we're in the process of moving house. I *think* our paperwork like that is in the shed...somewhere...
But I *did* write a disgusted letter to Peter Garrett (who was Environmental spokesperson of the Labor Opposition a few months back) about the Rudd Labor Opposition's support of Gunn's Pulp Mill (see Link).
I am pleased to report that although Labor *still* support the very unpopular Pulp Mill (which will NOT go ahead if I have anything to do with it!), Garrett did such a lousy job in the lead-up to the election, that when Kevin Rudd won the election, Garrett was denigrated to being, in essence, Minister For Dusting The Furniture and Pouring Coffee, and most of the environmental responsibilities have since gone over to Penny Wong, who seems a LOT more capable.
Sorry - typo., I meant, I recently wrote a letter of disgust to Garrett.
Ah yes, I did know you were in the middle of renovating for a sale and move...
Ha! Minister for Dusting Furniture! There are a few ministers here to whom I would love to assign such a post!
(P.S. When you get a moment could you let me know how you embed those neat links into your comment? I can do that when I post an actual blog entry, but can't figure out how to do it in the comment section.)
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