Harper’s Mailbag Full Of Complaints About Afghan Mission
Posted August 6, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The majority of messages sent to his office by ordinary Canadians via mail, e-mail and telephone over the last few months have been critical of the military mission and how the federal government has handled repatriation ceremonies for fallen soldiers.
Twenty-five Canadians, including one diplomat and 24 soldiers, have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002 – five troops were killed this week alone. Four were killed during a firefight with the Taliban while the fifth died in a vehicle accident.
The Prime Minister’s Office received 1,453 letters and e-mails about the Afghan mission in May and two-thirds of those correspondences included a call to the government to pull out and bring the troops home. The military mission eclipsed all other issues that month, according to a government analysis.
It was a similar story in April when the P.M.O. received 1,805 letters and e-mails and another 422 phone calls on the subject. Many expressed anger over the government’s decision not to lower the flags at Parliament Hill when a Canadian soldier is killed.
And about 200 callers said they disagreed with Harper’s decision to ban the media from reporting on the return of the bodies of soldiers.
There are 36 people employed full-time to sort through all of the letters, e-mails and phone logs – up to two million correspondences a year – and categorize them by subject.
These messages are a stark contrast to those Harper received in February, congratulating him on his election victory. Most of the complaints that month were related to Liberal defector David Emerson, who is now the Conservative Trade Minister.
In March, Afghanistan was the second-most frequently mentioned subject in letters and calls to the Prime Minister, after the St. Lawrence seal hunt.
His messages are also quite a contrast to former prime minister Paul Martin’s mailbag where Afghanistan was barely mentioned.
The concerns outlined in the messages to the P.M. are also reflected in recent polls that suggest more than half of Canadians oppose the Kandahar mission.
