I am having a lot of trouble with some of the current Liberal Party positions and believe people should think about the following before casting a vote.
Refugees:
I am disgusted by the idea that Canada will be better off if we bring in refugees from the Middle East. If we want to bring in refugees as a humanitarian gesture then our motivation should be to help them and we should be picking those who need the most help. If our justification is that it will help us that means we will rob those countries of their brightest and best and they will have a more difficult time rebuilding when this crisis is over. If we want to practice charity we should do it for the victims, if we want to practice greed let's pick on someone our own size.
It is a very sad commentary on Canada that someone running for prime minister keeps telling us how much we can benefit from the plight of some of the most disadvantage in the world and we do not have the courage to rebuke him.
Tax the top one per cent:
This seems like Canadians trying to make a failed U.S. solution to a U.S. problem work for a non-problem in Canada. In the U.S. the top one per cent earn 19 per cent of the income and pay 38 per cent of the income tax. The qualifying income is $380,359 USD. Yet Warren Buffet says that he pays less tax than his secretary so this system does not work!
In Canada the top one per cent earns 10.3 per cent of the income and this percentage has dropped over the most recent five year period. Our top one per cent with a qualifying income of $215,700 pays 20.3 per cent of taxes. It is also worth note that the average income of the top one per cent of Canadians is $455,200 (less than $380,359 USD).
So my concern is that “asking” the top one per cent to pay more results in a greater disparity of income distribution. Also I worry that the super rich simply find a way to avoid these taxes. I am not sure we want to follow the USA done that road.
Pull our planes out of the Middle East:
I am very concerned that with the entry of Russia into the SyriaIraq situation any withdrawal would be reported to the Russian people as a sign of weakness and fear by Canada. Russia has been quite aggressive in the arctic and this perceived weakness could result in having to defend our northern lands and people.
Legalize marijuana:
Economically we rely on unrestricted transportation of manufactured goods across the CanadaU.S. border. There is a strong anti-marijuana lobby in the USA and they tend to be anti-free trade as well. Any border delay caused by revising our marijuana laws could dramatically affect the southern Ontario economy.
I have been around long enough to realize that election promises quite often do not result in government action but these four issues cause me a lot of concern.
Chuck Dandy
Duncan