Dear Editor,

Instead of attacking Michael Ignatieff, B. Burgess [Igantieff unknown quantity, April 12 Letters, Langley Advance] should analyze Stephen Harper’s record of four elections in seven years of minority government, compared to the three years of minority government of Lester B. Pearson.

Prime Minister Pearson created universal health care, the Maple Leaf flag, peace-keeping missions, student loans, Canadian Pension Plan, and Order of Canada.

He increased the role of the United Nations and won the Nobel Peace prize for his role averting disaster in the Suez Canal.

Harper never held a job other than in the oil industry or in a partisan political field. He has no background in international affairs, and despite claiming to be an economist, he has never held such a title.

He took the greatest surplus in Canadian history and turned it into the greatest deficit, with which we as tax payers are burdened. His solution to resolve the deficit is the same “trickle down economics” policy that bankrupted the U.S. economy, and he has spent $500 million dollars in negative advertising.

Burgess attacks Ignatieff for working outside of Canada. Does he also attack our great hockey players, Wayne Gretszky, Joe Sakic, and others, or our musicians and actors, too many to name?

Michael Ignatieff – a Rhodes Scholar – taught at universities in B.C., Ontario, Oxford, and Cambridge, and at Harvard in a position at Carr Centre for Human Rights.

There is no shame to work as a journalist, writer, or teacher. We want the best people to run for public office and create a government to better our citizens, and not someone spending wasteful tax dollars at the G20 in his rich country friends’ ridings, building gazebos and false lakes.

As a senior, I am appalled that the right-wing politics of fear and character assassinations appear to have their effect on some voters.

A. McCormick, Langley