A Canadian Member of Parialment discovered that a WWII veteran had not voted for him; the MP, Tom Wappel, wrote to the Veteran to berate him.  This was my reply.

Almost fourteen years ago I called the constituency office of my MP, then a Mr. Paul McCrossan, to ask if he could help me with my citizenship application.  I opened my query, rather sheepishly I recall, by saying that I was not even a citizen yet, and so I could not have supported the MP in the past.  Mr. McCrossan's assistant chuckled and told me, “Oh dear, it doesn't matter if you're a citizen or not, much less if you supported him.  If you're living in this riding, he's your MP.  Send us a letter and let's see if we can help you.”

I was a student of political science at the time, but those simple words were my first real life lesson in Civics — the words still ring fresh in my ears.  Four weeks after I mailed the letter to “my” MP, I got a reply, this time from the Secretary of State, then David Crombie, telling me that the matter had been brought to his attention and the issue had been resolved. 

I fell in love with Canada then.  Not simply because of the help – a simple question of timing that, though necessary and much appreciated at the time, ended up not being all that crucial after all – but because of the attention.  Here I was, an immigrant, a recent arrival; my adopted home owed me nothing, so far as I could reasonably expect, except a minimum standard of treatment as a human being.  And yet – my MP and his office had clearly gone through the trouble of making representations on my behalf; the office of the Secretary of State had made the necessary calls; and here I was, a newly-minted citizen, entitled to a passport and, more important, to vote.  As if to drive the point of the lesson home to me, Mr. McCrossan or his office was never solicited me for support because of that help; nor was there ever a letter especially addressed to me, saying, “Remember your citizenship application.”

A country that so treats its people, I said to myself then, deserves not just respect and gratitude, but my love and devotion.

In the past fourteen years, as I have learned more about my country and its history, my respect for and devotion to Canada have only deepened.  It is with pride that I speak to my non-Canadian friends of all that we, as Canadians, have achieved in the 134 years of our history.  Building and maintaining a country so vast geographically and diverse demographically is not easy; to do so while taking part in the great struggles for freedom and survival this century must have taken a heroic effort.  It is with awe that I think of all those who risked, and gave, their lives in those struggles, so that the country of which I am now a citizen can hold its head high in the community of nations with a just sense of its place in the world.  Whether standing before Soldiers' Tower at the University of Toronto, or the Vimy Monument in France, it has been an honour for me to present my respects, officially and personally, to the dead and the alive, who made my being here possible.

I have spent the last six years in the service of my country, in Canada and abroad (as a diplomat).  I am often asked why I do what I do (the financial sacrifice, truth be told, is considerable).  Well, you can trace this all to that first lesson in Civics, those two simple sentences uttered by the assistant to my then MP, fourteen years ago.

It is a lesson that Tom Wappel, a current MP, has yet to learn.

My dismay, indeed grief, about the episode is profound.  If it were possible, in Canada, to construct an antithesis of democratic behaviour by a public official, this would be it.  It would be difficult to find greater contempt for the electorate or indeed the Parliament short of promoting the dismantling of parliamentary democracy itself.  Forget Burke; this is Tammany Hall.  The Rotten Boroughs could not have produced a more rotten fruit.

Am I exaggerating? 

The secret ballot, lest we forget, is one of the most important principles of democratic government.  And I know something about this: my first voting experience was in Iran, when I was fifteen (which used to the voting age in Iran).  I still recall having to run from one corner of the voting room to another, trying to hide my ballot (without much success) from the curious eyes of the spies sprinkled around the place.  I had intended to spoil my ballot, truth be told (not voting was not an option, really), but ended up having to vote for the least offensive candidates. 

That, Mr. Wappel, is one reason I left my homeland and settled in Canada.

(In fact, the “secrecy” of the vote is so sacred a rule of political behaviour in Canada that it has become axiomatic in polite society: my best friend does not ask me how I vote.  It is simply rude to do so.  But I guess manners are not a prime consideration for the sarcastic pen of the Honourable Member.)

But if asking about someone's voting habits is rude, it is outright obnoxious for a public official, on public payroll, to refuse help to the public on the grounds of that vote – or, even more egregious, of the expressed desire to vote one way or another in the future.  Mr. Wappel is an elected representative and I merely a junior official; but we both are servants of the same master.  What would he say if, let us say, a consular officer refused to help a Canadian in distress abroad because of that person's anti-abortion or pro-capital punishment views?  Or, more to the point, if a female officer refused to help someone who, as did Mr. Wappel a decade ago, appeared to question the value of women's work?  Unthinkable; we serve all Canadians.  Well, I guess not unthinkable for the good MP.

All of this, of course, begs the question of the lack of judgement of a man who puts his contempt for the Canadian democratic tradition in writing, sarcastically, in a letter to an 81 year old veteran.  A politician this dense is on a political suicide mission.  The Liberal caucus should seriously consider giving him a helping hand by pushing him out into the wilderness, where he belongs.