PuckChaser said:
There are 2 things wrong with this campaign:
1. The opposition had years to introduce any veterans legislation they wanted as a private member's bill, which would have been political suicide for the Tories to filibuster or quash. They didn't, and these ABC dudes are being used by them with no concrete promises other than "trust us, we're better".
Do you even look before you make these wild claims? https://openparliament.ca/politicians/peter-stoffer/
C-633 - died on the order paper.
C-572 - died on the order paper.
C-472 - died on the order paper.
C-447 - died on the order paper.
Sorry, I only searched for 3 minutes and on one MP's website to find those. I'm sure you won't mind me not wasting any more time dispelling
that myth.
2. They've tied in all veterans with their campaign, from a profession that is required by law to be apolitical. Instead of campaigning to bring veteran issues to the forefront of the campaign, they've instantly alienated 30-30% of the voting population who vote Tory against their cause. If they came out and said "We're upset with the current government's false promises, and the opposition parties' failure to act or provide concrete policy statements to fix our issues. We want the shameful treatment of our vets as a main campaign issue." They'd get much more broad, all-party support, and very likely have much more veteran/serving member support as it is.
Sorry, only the CAF is required to be apolitical. Your average veteran retired from the CAF can do whatever he/she pleases politically.
There are going to be people who are going to vote Tory come hell or high water, regardless of what you tell them. These people are not the target of the ABC campaign. Their target is people like me, who voted Tory in the last three elections, but is open enough to realize I may have made a mistake. I consider myself moderate right - and the CPC left me standing in the dust on their way to extreme right wing status when they got their majority in the last election. There are a lot of people like me who have jumped ship on the party, and it's going to bite them in the butt. If you wander over to Erin O'Toole's Facebook page, you'll get the impression that everything is rosy in Veteran land, and this flurry of pre-election activity to shore up the gaping holes in the NVC is much less about sincerely caring about veterans, and more about vote-buying.
As well, stating their personal appearance isn't an issue, glosses over the fact that the veterans they seek to unite put great stock in one's personal appearance and professional turnout. How many times have to you just tuned out an officer because s/he looks like crap? If they're too lazy to form a proper beret after X years in the CAF which required them to do it, I'll be just as lazy and tune them out, regardless of how good a deal they struck with X party to help us out.
Still on about the beret. Sigh...
op:
