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Letter: Toes the party line

NDP supporter should be more forthright

Editor, The News

Re: “Each party had a party platform,” July 7.

Elizabeth J. Rosenau writes that she “is going to be giving Horgan and Weaver the benefit of the doubt.”

I should hope so. Ms. Rosenau is a prominent local NDPer and was the party’s candidate in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows during the 2013 provincial election, for heaven’s sake. I find her aforesaid statement and the lack of any reference to her party connections in her letter disingenuous and misleading.

Intellectual honesty has never been the left’s strong suit. During the last labour dispute involving the BCTF, local teachers set up a sham group/demonstration with a name like Parents in Support of Teachers (or some such nonsense). When I accused the group of being largely composed of teachers, their families, and friends (i.e., shills), their childish defence was that they were all parents, as though that made it okay to pretend to be a grass-roots group for propaganda purposes.

Likewise, when I lived in Burnaby, a phony grassroots group popped up with a hilariously vague name (something like Concerned Citizens of Burnaby) and started pumping out leftist propaganda. When I checked out their website, I discovered that their mailing address was identical to that of the BCTF. These deceitful tactics are an insult to the intelligence of the public that the left professes to love so ardently.

When a prominent politico (such as a present or former candidate or a party official) is less than transparent and fails to mention his/her party affiliation in a letter to the editor that clearly toes the party line, editors often append a brief note warning readers of the letter-writer’s strong party connections and bias. I’m disappointed that no such note was added to Ms. Rosenau’s letter.

Kirk Brown

Maple Ridge



Neil Corbett

About the Author: Neil Corbett

I have been a journalist for more than 30 years, the past decade with the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News.
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