Letter of the Day: Logo on bottles offends

Conservative MP Shelly Glover is upset and surprised that her water-bottle donation was rejected by the school board. Why should we expect her to understand the reason the school board turned them down? After all, this is a member of a political party which sees nothing wrong with spending millions of dollars -- thanks to Mr. Harper's "transparency" we will likely never know how much -- on preelection advertising, telling us what a wonderful job the government is doing.

In addition, they think there is nothing wrong with putting their party logo on government cheque props for "photo-ops" or using taxpayers' money to send out phony questionnaires, with arrows drawn to "The Leader" as the choice of people capable of helping Canada recover from the recession. This is a government which appears to be willing to stoop to any level to fool voters, forgetting the fact they were elected to replace a government they accused of being corrupt.

It is ironic though, that a former police officer appears to have trouble knowing the difference between right and wrong.

ROBERT TURNER

Portage la Prairie

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Re: Water-bottle rejection leaves sour taste for MP (Nov. 14.)

Congratulations to the Louis Riel School Division for its decision to not allow Shelly Glover to distribute water bottles emblazoned with the Conservative logo and her name as MP to schoolchildren in the French immersion course. There is certainly nothing wrong with her attempt to assist the students in some manner, but please, leave the blatant politicking out of it.

As to her comments regarding Ray Simard, this just demonstrates how low this party will stoop in attempting to draw attention away from their own shortcomings by attacking others. Glover would do well to take a lesson from the former MP for St. Boniface, the late Ron Duhumel, who distributed thousands of pieces of school supplies to assist children, both French and English, without blatantly attempting to promote himself or the Liberal party in connection with that program.

A simple solution would be for Glover to offer unmarked water bottles to these children. In this way she could be seen as helping to promote the children and not her party.

TED CUNNINGHAM

Winnipeg

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Instead of recognizing her gaffe and quietly letting the controversy slip away, Shelly Glover in turn blames the media for hyping the story, the school division for rejecting her "incentives," and her former opponent for not coming up with "proactive activities" (such as water bottles, we presume) to promote speaking French by French immersion students.

If Glover were sincere in her efforts, she could have advocated for the establishment of a scholarship for accomplished students, organized cultural events, or provided career information to encourage students to speak French.

It is part of a national Conservative strategy to promote name recognition of the party and its candidates by commandeering the Olympic logo and plastering their MPs' signatures across giant stimulus cheques delivered across the country. The hope is that the Canadian voter, tired of repeated elections, will simply opt for the familiar name in the next election.

DON METZ

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 18, 2009 A13