It didn’t take but a few short hours to flush our MP Mark Strahl out to attend himself to the human tragedy playing out in the alleys and parks of our fair city of Chilliwack because of the scourge of drug consumption here.
Instead of doing the right thing and advocating for a safe injection site, he trots out his results of a scientifically flawed self serving survey, the results of which he wants us to believe shows that the people of Chilliwack are the most unfeeling,vicious and uncaring populous in the province. He avers that his “survey” shows that 77 per cent of the ballots he received are opposed to a safe injection site in our town. In my building of 42 residences, on the day his survey arrived in the mail, I counted 36 in the recycle bin next to the elevator. I then visited a large condo near the No. 1 fire hall where there are 55 units and counted 40 in their trash.
In The Progress when Mr. Strahl was advertising his results on crime in Chilliwack he vowed that he sent a survey to every eligible voting household in the riding. There are 70,000 voters in this riding. His recent sample numbered only 1,356 – hardly a cross section of sentiment in this community.
This “Strahl” vote serves only the views held by this MP. He has convinced himself that there is no virtue in providing care for the drug addicted who are dying in the streets and eating up millions of taxpayer dollars on ambulance services, police interventions, ancillary health costs and the time and energy of countless volunteers who are doing their best to assist these people in the hope that lives will be saved and futures can be made possible for those who will receive counselling at the proposed centers.
Mr. Strahl is failing his riding and the vulnerable in it.
He is disseminating false propaganda for his own misguided purposes by this survey. I ask him, where is his sense of civic duty? Where is his compassion?
Surely the good Christian people at least upon whom he depends for support are having second thoughts about his harsh reliance on his conservative dogma.
There must be at least 1,356 of you out there among the nearly 68,700 eligible voters who do not approve of the stance that this MP espouses.
Text him, email him, if you still can, write him a letter, better still use that cell phone permanently glued to your left hand and call him to demand that he advocate for a safe injection site here in our riding.
Wayne Underhill