What if Betty just said no to Tory trashmail?

It’s getting so I’m afraid to look in the mailbox — you never know what you’ll find in there.

Last night, on my way home, I approached our rural mailbox with trepidation. My fears were not unfounded, for, among the bills and new-credit-card offers and assorted other propaganda was — you guessed it — mail from Betty.

This stuff is worse than being flamed with an unwelcome blog post. Another in her series of one-sheet election blasts, paid for by you and me, it was headlined Helping Seniors. If 10,000 of these things are mailed out at a shot, why have I received four of them? There must be other deserving constituents.

Anyway, like the ones on crime, drugs and the environment, this one extolls the policies of the Conservative government. Interestingly, it doesn’t directly trash the Liberal record on same (as the others have done), so I guess the former government must have done alright on this score.

Now here’s the thing. Betty Hinton is going to retire at the end of her current term, ie. whenever a writ is dropped for the next election. Her time in office has been marked for her singularly dogged adherence to the party line. Tories good, everyone else bad.

But she has nothing to lose by being candid about this outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money. She could gain herself a lot of credit if she just said, “No, I don’t believe these particular brochures are a good use of taxpayers’ money and I am no longer going to distribute them.” She doesn’t even have to say they’re a waste of money, just that she’s not going to be part of it.

Former Conservative MP Don Cameron was in the other day, and I asked him what he thought. Cameron, a man of high integrity, and still a loyal Conservative, said the mailouts are “a waste of money.” But if Betty doesn’t wish to go that far, fine.

Then listen to what former Senator Len Marchand, named the Greatest Kamloopsian not long ago, had to say about the role of politicians. Way back when he was still an MP himself, Len told me in an interview, “I am not a robot.”

He was saying that a politician is elected to do the best he or she can based on his/her principles and beliefs. An MP is not there to blindly carry out the wishes of constituents on any particular issue, nor to meekly accept each and every thing the party preaches as the Gospel. In other words, people are born with brains, and they should use them to think and to question.

So, Betty could actually say no.