Dear Editor,
These are frightening times we are living in, not due to COVID-19, but due to what we have allowed our government leaders at all levels do to us.
More than 61,000 Canadian soldiers died in the Second World War, and tens of thousands more fought in order to allow us to live in a democracy, to have freedoms, to be able to live our lives with choices, to have freedom of movement.
They would be shaking their heads in dismay if they could witness how easily we have allowed our governments to take those freedoms away, all based on fear.
Totally unsubstantiated models, with little scientific basis, were used to say we had to stay in our homes, stop working, close all educational facilities or else “millions would die.”
We had to stay in our homes until “the curve flattened.”
Well millions didn’t die, fewer than 200 died in B.C. and the curve flattened over a month ago.
So why isn’t, everything opened now.
What right has governments got to deny a person a job, a wage, to be free.
Who says a barber isn’t essential, every job is essential to the person making a living from it.
No government has the right to deny a person his right to a job.
If you subtract the people who died in long-term care homes, the number of deaths is even fewer.
Our government, and those of most countries, have destroyed millions of lives with a lie.
All educational facilities should be reopened, and all businesses allowed to open.
Let citizens decide whether or not they wish to use them.
Yes many have died “with” the coronavirus, but considerably fewer “from” the virus.
We have the right to choose.
Graham Mowatt, Chilliwack
P.S. Although I have moved to Chilliwack due to Maple Ridge’s lack of gated communites for old fogies like me, I still own property in Maple Ridge.
Editor’s Note: Graham Mowatt ran for mayor in 2014.
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