An open letter to Tony  Clement, MP

When I got the first one of these little flyers I thought, “How great, Tony is looking for grassroots input.”

Now as the snowstorm of these little flyers has increased to rival the snows of Toronto for 2008 I am not so impressed.

Two major problems:

One: The questions you ask, and the possible answers you allow to be checked off, are ridiculously self-serving.

I mean, if you ask a simple enough question and only provide one viable answer (which just happens to be the one you want to hear) then the result is pretty predictable, isn’t it?

Two: Who is paying for these flyers? Is it your election funds, or our government administration funds? If it is your personally raised election funds, then the fact that the results of these surveys are statistically insignificant garbage does not really concern me as it is your money in effect that is being wasted.

If, on the other hand, it is funds that I have contributed through taxation to run our government that are being used for this foolishness, then I have an issue. If we are to use tax-based funds for a survey, then that survey should at least be scientifically significant and produce a result that has some meaning. These objects do not meet that criteria and are thus a waste of tax dollars that should be stopped.

Could you please explain the above questions?

As for the issue of the gun registry, the idea at first seemed good. The police say it is helpful (at least those that I have talked to.) My verdict is still out on the whole thing since you have correctly pointed out that “the bad guys never registered their guns.”

I don’t live in the far north, but I live enough in the country that a gun to me is just another tool to use. Similar in my mind to a shovel, or a rake. I use a rake to clean up the lawn, a gun to get rid of a nuisance raccoon, no big operational difference here.

I don’t see the gun as a “sporting item” just as I don’t see tearing up the countryside with ATVs as a sport. It is just a necessary tool to allow one to get on with the job of living in the country.

If you live in some parts of the country I suspect a gun would be a more necessary tool, used to protect yourself from becoming, say, a polar bear’s lunch. Used to allow you to feed your family on a day-to-day basis in the far north too, I expect. Again I imagine these people view their guns as a working tool in their day-to-day life.

Very few of us need hand guns.

None of us in the southern part of Canada need to carry hand guns in our vehicles or on our person.

So much for the viewpoint on guns.

Now for the registry.

Can someone please explain the costs of this thing? I can buy a computer right here in Huntsville (and we are not the centre of the high-tech universe) that could easily hold all the data for 30 million guns, sort it, display it, and send it out over the net to qualified recipients such as the police for a few tens of thousands of dollars. Certainly less than a $100,000 cost for the basic hardware.

Now, I know there are a lot of things I don’t know about this registry but at the last accounting I have seen over two billion dollars (that  would be $2,000,000,000) has been spent!!!

When I ask how this is possible I never get a straight answer!

One day I am going to take my truck to Miramichi where the registry is kept. I figure the sidewalks and streetlights must all be coated in pure friggin gold to come up with a cost like this. Heck, even the local Horton’s probably uses gold-plated china and cutlery! I’ll just load up with some of the gold (they probably won’t miss a ton or two) and head home. I can use it to pay some of my taxes for your little flyers!

A few good answers might be handy here.

Brian Tapley,
Huntsville