Letter to The Right Honourable Stephen Harper

January 2, 2009

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper

House of Commons

Ottawa, Ontario

K1A 0A6

Dear Prime Minister,

I would like to believe that some of what you said in Parliament during the crisis of confidence in that venerable institution was not indicative of your character. I am not naïve, I realize that in politics even honest men and women must, for the good of the Party, if not the Nation, be miserly with the truth.

In the hope that the New Year will signal a change of heart in your government, I have enclosed an abridged version of Shooting the Messenger, A Whistleblower’s Tale the true story of the trials and tribulations of the first Foreign Affairs’ whistleblower.

My story is dedicated, in part, to the people of Ashcroft, British Columbia for helping a French-Canadian family down on its luck. The dedication is both an expression of gratitude and a way of taking the sting out of one of the two serious accusations made in A Whistleblower’s Tale.

Silence which spoke volume, or dismissive correspondence as it pertained to the plight of the first Foreign Affairs’ whistleblower was the hallmark of the Liberals when they were in power. What will you do, Prime Minister?

So many years ago it was ranchers, cowboys and miners, English-speaking Western-Canadians who came to the aid of people, who were responsible for that allegedly infuriating foreign language on cereal boxes, without giving it a second thought. Like most Canadians, they were decent, honest, hard-working people and it was doing the right thing that counted.

There is a party in Parliament whose pre-occupation with issues of principle, on doing the right thing by its constituents is legendary. No, I am not referring to the NDP! The self-proclaimed friend of working men and women also can not be bothered.

If you all don’t care Prime Minister, do I ask the Bloc Québecquois or its provincial counterpart to intervene to try to get justice for an honest public servant who was subjected to totalitarian-like reprisals for insisting that Foreign Affairs was not above the law, and could not ignore the requirement of the Official Languages Act or help itself to tens of millions of dollars which Parliament had not authorized?

Is getting justice for the whistleblower worth the risk? Is justice that important?

So many years ago my parents took a risk and joined a community that conventional wisdom and the media said was anathema to their interests and aspirations and were pleasantly surprised.

Perhaps it’s time I took this uncharacteristic step and sought help from unlikely allies, not only because I will never stop seeking justice by whatever legitimate means at my disposal, but because we may all be pleasantly surprise to find out that the Bloc may not be the unprincipled country-destroying bogeyman it was made out to be during the recent debate on the fate of the government, and that would be good for Canadian unity, at least I hope so.

Sincerely

_____________________

Bernard Payeur