Dear Editor,

Some people seemingly can’t be satisfied if they can’t vent at something happening in the community. These days, what used to be simple differences of opinion become built up into name-calling and outraged episodes. 

Living in Canada, in Quebec and in the Pontiac as we do, we have the privilege of voting governments in or out. I say privilege because it’s not a right we share with all the people in the world. It should be so, but it’s not. So people who adamantly protest a certain project or time table of their government, insisting that it’s due to gross incompetence or malfeasance, are usually wrong, in fact or intention. A good way of balancing against this tendency to oversimplify and misinterpret is to attend council meetings or consult the minutes posted online. 

In most cases, your local council is acting in the best interest of the community and which project gets done at what time is a complicated matter of co-ordinating labour and materials. So, “voting the whole lot out of office” may be satisfying in the short run but if you attend the meetings you’ll see that your fellow citizens who sit on council are just handling the business as it arises, within the confines of provincial regulations, time constraints and financial responsibilities. 

So vote for outrage and disruption if you want to but don’t expect everything to automatically be fixed in two weeks’ time.

Robert Wills

Thorne and Shawville, Que.