I read with great interest in last week’s paper the comments made by Ross Ashforth regarding voter apathy and the municipal budget.

Voter apathy has indeed reached a level, not only municipally but nationally as well, where people have all but given up on just who our various levels of government truly represent. I see five-storey condos being built in Gravenhurst, yet hear people in Gravenhurst say, “when did that happen? What an eyesore.” We read about millions of tax dollars building a health unit office, then the town having to pay for it all over again for over a 40-year period of time, leaving people who understand economics ask the question, “how many times do taxpayers have to pay contractors over and over again?”

My understanding of late has led me to believe that governments, at all levels, have become the servants of contractors, corporations, etc., instead of the people. With lobbying at the federal level and the naïve logic of greater tax base through squeezed living conditions at the municipal level, the voice of the people who both pay the taxes and live in the communities has fallen into an abyss of frustration, disillusionment and indeed apathy.

Pat Boone, the well-known American singer, conservative and in my view minion for corporations once said it just right: “What we live in is a capitalist democracy.” I believe in capitalism, and of course I believe in democracy, but not in the order Pat Boone and his invisible sources promote.

What we should be living in is a democracy in which our economy is based on capitalism. When democracy doesn’t come first, then all that can follow is corporate/lobby/contractor-controlled government. This leads to voters losing their right — and it is a right — to have equal say in our communities and our provinces and our country for the purpose of a fair and balanced sharing of interests.

We North Americans boast of how we got rid of slavery back in the 19th century, but don’t bat an eye at paying $6.95 for a junky piece of electronics made in China, where people are paid pennies a week while corporations haul in millions in the background. How convenient that we can blame the foreign government for slave conditions and not feel responsible as consumers for what our dollar ultimately supports.

How much longer will it be before any municipality taxes the homeowner (including ludicrous increases in our water bills) to the point that they have to sell their house and go make a contractor happy by being forced into an apartment? How long can a provincial government claim it’s creating jobs for Ontario, when the jobs that are being filled are by desperate people working two and three jobs to just pay the rent for their apartment (forget college for the kids).

How much longer does, indeed, the whole world have to wait to realize that there is no profit in peace, therefore all the national “capitalist democracies” will push for war, for any reason, just to keep the rich getting richer?

The bottom line is we’re being defrauded on all levels for trillions of dollars. Being bled of our strength as a democracy, we’re left powerless, thus apathetic.

Well, I’ve made my point. I’m going to go up to drop this off at the Banner and pick up my taxes as well. Therein I shall find that a percentage of my income has gone toward supporting all of the above. Dare I do more than write a letter to the paper, I’ll be branded as some nutbar or have the illuminati start chasing after me for daring to speak the truth.

Barney O’Hara

Gravenhurst