Canadian PM FAIL
Dear Mr Harper,
In general people do not care for the government to be tracking their religious affiliation. In particular however, there are few groups who care less for this sort of tracking than Jews. Seriously, you’re not going to get votes by sending Rosh Hashanah cards to your Jewish constituents. It freaks us out, really.
I was a little alarmed at the idea that the government might have some list of Canadian Jews, whether or not they’re using that for benevolent or malevolent or cynical reasons,” Mr. Terkel said. “It doesn’t seem my religion should be the business of any federal government.
With No Love,
Arthur
P.S. It would be ever so slightly more convincing if you didn’t also schedule the upcoming election [link to http://www.nodice.ca/elections/canada/ no longer works] on a Jewish holiday. Hope that helps.
Wow. That’s….I’m not sure what that is — but thank you for posting it!
Was it the government that did the mailing, or a political party?
Chris, between a public entity keeping a sort of religion registry, or a private entity keeping it, which is worse?
I don’t the answer to that, though I do know they are governed by completely different privacy laws.
Here’s the really weird part about this story, briefly alluded to in the article: He did the same thing last year, got the same kind of negative attention, but obviously didn’t care enough to stop the practice.
The Globe and Mail seems to imply the mailing is the second annual mailing and that it comes from the Prime Minister’s Office… So using public funds for what’s essentially an image/campaign thing.