My Letter to My MP

 

Dear Mr. Erskine-Smith:

The Prime Minister’s invocation of the Emergency Act is exactly the sort of dangerous overreaction of which I warned in a previous email. Use it now to suppress an inconvenient peaceful protest, and any government in future can use it to suppress dissent. Canadian democracy itself is thereby endangered, if not ended. Should this happen, the only way to restore the integrity of our institutions will be to revoke the act altogether, leaving Canada defenseless in a real emergency.

This is a reckless path that is certain to escalate tensions. There is no possible way this will not leave divisions and ill-feelings in our civil society, even if our democracy and our nation survives.

I call on you to act to pull us back from this brink.

Sincerely,

Stephen K. Roney