Inspired by the great letter sent to The Guardian by Jonathan Kay, I have decided to contact the British newspaper as well. Below, my letter.

Dear Sir,

As a proud Canadian of a pragmatist persuasion and with some roots in Britain, your ongoing commitment to print Heather Mallick’s defamatory columns leaves me no choice but to send you this letter (as well as to publish it on the site of my online column).

In Ms. Mallick’s May 3 column “Canada’s cold new dawn“, your newspaper yet again provides a forum for this individual, whose primary objective seems to be the sullying of Canada’s reputation in the world. Since your, otherwise excellent, newspaper is held in high esteem not only in Britain but around the world, the damage Ms. Mallick’s written words can cause is, indeed, potentially great.

Having no specific party affiliation, I have voted Conservative, Liberal, Green and, in the May 2 election, NDP (New Democratic Party). I have never believed in rabid partisanship and pride myself on being truly “post-partisan”. As such, and in my capacity as a web columnist, I always take care to seek out and understand the positions of all parties and ideological groups. Any conclusions I reach in my column, or as a voter on election day, are invariably informed by common sense, pragmatism and, above all, by what is right for my country, Canada. Through it all, I seek the truth, no matter which party benefits from or is hurt by it.

Inserting deliberate falsehoods in my column, or any work I do as a professional writer and translator, would go against my professional ethics and my integrity as an educated member of civilized society. However, Ms. Mallick, sadly, does not adhere to the same standards and principles.

Some countries, including in Europe, have laws on their books that make it possible to sue for defamation citizens who besmirch the reputation of their country in the rest of world. If Canada had such a law, and honestly I do not know whether we do or not, Ms. Mallick would easily be found guilty of untold counts of such defamation.

In the past, your newspaper allowed Ms. Mallick to spread her wild fantasies and lies about Canada, its politicians and its voters. She has referred to our government variously as being “Stalinist” or as working hard to turn Canada into the 51st state of the US.

In her May 3 column, she again peddles the falsehood that the re-elected Conservative government of Stephen Harper will pursue the “full-scale Americanisation” of Canada. As a matter of fact, while there are some in Canada that would very much love for that to happen, our Prime Minister has made it sufficiently clear, through his words and his actions, that such a project is simply not in the pipeline – not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Even many of the Americanophiles in Canada have given up on the idea, seeing the bad shape the US is in and having decided that being a kind of Canada that sets itself and stands apart from our southern neighbour is not such a bad thing after all.

Ms. Mallick then follows this up with further unfounded allegations regarding the privatization of Canada’s public health-care system, or that Prime Minister Harper is in cahoots with the “Evangelical Christian right”.

Mr. Harper has made a firm commitment to public health care, including further increases to its funding. Nor does Mr. Harper do the bidding of Christian fundamentalists. Canadians, even those who go to church every Sunday, prefer to keep their country as secular as it is today. Here, too, the situation in the US serves as a deterrent. Canadians have no truck with endless debates about abortion or gay marriage. These issues were settled a long time ago, and our Prime Minister does not want to reopen them either.

As a post-partisan, I am always concerned about extremist ideas, such as those coming from radical libertarians, racists or left-wingers, such as those who commit crimes and vandalize public properties under the guise of “protest” (e.g., G8/G20 summits in Toronto last year). I can assure your newspaper, as well as my readers, that our Parliament does not contain any extremists of any kind, and even a Conservative majority government will not change that.

As a result, I can easily vote for any party represented in our House of Commons, depending on which one makes the most sense at any given time. Whether we have a Conservative, Liberal, NDP or Green government, our country will not vanish from the face of the Earth. No matter which party wins and ends up holding power for whatever number of years, it is not the end of the world, even if the likes of Ms. Mallick may feel that life has become so unbearable that suicide seems the only viable option.

If Ms. Mallick feels that life is not worth living in Canada anymore, she is free to move to any of the many countries where becoming so depressed that taking one’s own life seems like a good idea is the order of the day – unlike in Canada, where such sentiments have nothing to do with the actual government of the day, and everything to do with one’s own personal (and mental) issues.

Ms. Mallick is not representative of Canada, and your newspaper should choose a different writer to represent this great nation of ours in the hallowed pages of The Guardian.

Sincerely,

Werner Patels
www.WernerPatels.com
Writer, translator & web columnist