Rural areas of Canada and the U.S. are strongholds for Conservative/Reform/Republican politics. Words like liberal, welfare, rights, environmentalism are bandied about like slurs, while abstract concepts like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, making your own work, and loyalty to your country and used almost as religious mantras and identifiers of the true believers. Spin doctors are quick to latch on to this blind faith and give impassioned speeches about the farmer, the way things were, the heartland. But do they really have their best interests at heart? Time and again it seems the answer is no.
She goes on to draw a straight line between meat packers receiving a chunk of Alberta's mad cow aid money, potential plans to privatize Canada Post, and the relentless and ongoing dismantling of the Wheat Board as evidence of the myriad ways in which Conservative/Reform policies screw over farmers and other rural Canadians, all in the service of corporate profits.
I would love to see this one published in the Calgary Herald. After all, nothing is more convincing to a westerner than enlightened self interest.
I would love to see Stephane Dion attack rural voters for their obsession with guns, religion, and immigration.
ReplyDeleteAgree that it was a brilliant post and voted it up. The post is worth re-publishing.
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