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More to life than economy

The economy isn't all there is to life, one reader says.

To the Editor,

It’s all somewhat confusing.  The NDP says “this” and the Liberals say “that, the Conservatives and the Green Party are almost forgotten in the ruckus. The flood of Liberal ads about how good they are remind me of how Christy Clark used public employees and money to help make those ads. I know that wasn’t their intention, but it does add a certain dimension to the continual barrage of half truths.

Christy’s government has given us increased costs for basic needs like health care, education, and those fancy ferries, in exchange for less services. The export of raw logs continues.

Colin Hansen’s 2009 budget had the B.C. government “overspending its revenues by $2.8 billion that year, ministry expenditures will fall by $500 million over the next three years and B.C. will run a deficit for the next four. A surplus is imagined by 2013”. Sounds familiar. We now have a new twist to the old fairy tale: mining and oil/gas/coal exports will save us sometime in the future if we keep electing these people.

Of course, we really don’t know what the Liberal government is doing. According to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, Liberal government has stopped keeping records of major decisions in order to circumvent freedom of information laws and avoid public scrutiny.

For everything that questions Liberal competence and efficiency, not to mention honesty and public benefit, someone will come up with what the NDP did wrong a decade or so ago. Seems to me they both have done some good things and some not-so-good things.

My hope is that, as we go to the polls, we will seek independent information even while we enjoy or endure the silly ads.  And that we will remember there is more to life than the economy: breathing clean air, drinking healthy water, having a sustainable and dependable food source, and being the kind of people our heirs can be proud of.

Barbara Cooper,

Port Alberni