Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge Insults Yukon Voters

The Conservatives are notorious for sending out partisan literature and charging it to taxpayers. In fact even when they were the Reform Party and later the Alliance, they were always being told that they were abusing the system, but scamming taxpayers is simply their way of life.

When Stephen Harper was running for Alliance party leader, he accused Maurice Vellacott of using his constituency office to promote Stockwell Day.

When Peter MacKay was leader of the progressive Conservatives, he accused Harper of targeting his riding with unwarranted 'junk mail'.

Now years later, the same people are actually promoting this tax grab that is costing taxpayers about 8 million dollars a year.

MPs are allowed to send literature to 10% of their riding, but these guys target opposition riding's instead, with personal attacks or Karl Rove style push polling.

Will they ever stop? Probably not. It's a sickness commonly known as the George Bush Syndrome. Why act professional when you can be immature and petty? And of course, why use your own money when you can use ours?

I'm fairly lucky in Kingston, having the Speaker of the House as my MP. He knows the laws inside and out, so the Conservatives don't dare abuse the system here. However, I've recently learned that their local candidate, Brian Abrams; has like Harper, hired a U.S. Republican pollster to run his campaign, so I expect to be getting some crap anytime now.

When Rod Bruinooge distributed his nonsense in the Yukon, residents were very upset. First off, he is a Conservative MP from Winnipeg, and secondly, the nature of the flyers was an insult to them. At least one resident wondered if they were trying to reach the elementary school crowd.

The Waxing Moon
Who the Hell is Rod Bruinooge, MP?
September 17, 2008
Rachel Westfall
Whitehorse, YT

Whoever he is, he has been blanketing Whitehorse with childish propaganda flyers telling us (in two mono-syllabic words or less) why we should vote Conservative in the upcoming election. I couldn't help wading in on this one. I sent this letter to the Winnipeg Free Press as well as to our local papers today.

Open letter to Rod Bruinooge, MP, Winnipeg South

Rod Bruinooge, as the MP for Winnipeg South, why are you spamming the Yukon with Conservative propaganda flyers?

Also, are your flyers aimed at a preschool reading comprehension level and attention span because you are operating under the misconception that northerners have a low level of functional literacy, and are easily swayed by two-word slogans?

If you looked at the results of the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey, you would see that the Yukon had the highest average literacy score of all the provinces and territories.

The 2006 Census found that the province or territory with the highest proportion of post-secondary accredited residents was the Yukon. As well, if you visited the territory, you'd likely notice that many Yukon residents have a great deal of experiential learning.

Knowing this, would you have littered our mailboxes with your dumbed-down flyers?

Also, if you looked into what our priorities are here in the Yukon, you might have come up with some very different themes and slogans from the ones you targeted with your flyers. Just by looking at the local papers, a few or our priorities would likely jump out at you: for example, economic sustainability, affordability of housing, social justice, First Nation self-government, labour market demand, environmental degradation, quality of life, and the need to find a balance between residential development, resource extraction, traditional land use and wilderness preservation.

Can you see why your flyers are not being received well by Yukoners? Bluntly put, your flyers come across as overly simplistic, poorly researched, and even deliberately misleading.

You aren't doing the local Conservative candidate any favours with your propaganda campaign. As we, Canadian taxpayers, had to pay for your ill-conceived mail-outs, I must ask you in good conscience to please stop wasting valuable resources on these flyers.