MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via our website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a letter published Wednesday about a recent protest at a pancake breakfast hosted by Simcoe North MPP Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities of Ontario.
I felt compelled to respond to a published letter from Keith Elliott regarding the protest held on Saturday in (Coldwater) at the pancake breakfast hosted by Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities of Ontario.
The Minister is allowed to have a personal opinion without a doubt. As a Minister, it is unethical to bring those personal opinions to Queen's Park and insist that they be included in the Hansard transcript.
It is also unethical of Ted Arnott, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, to allow the continuation of her personal attack on three professors and 17 students. She read out the names of these people slowly and with intent to discourage anyone with a differing opinion than hers to be afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation in the form of a permanently recorded public document.
Without investigation nor hate speech charges laid, she unilaterally decided that her position guaranteed her the impunity to publicly address her own personal opinion and comprehension of statements made from those who oppose the aggression of the State of Israel on the civilians of Gaza and through complicity of the Legislative Assembly Speaker, has now recorded these names in a public document with an unfounded bias against those individuals.
These actions certainly warrant an apology and an amendment to the Hansard transcript as she is an elected official and should be held to account for her unethical actions.
SimcoeCounty4Palestine doesn't appear to be forcing their opinion on anyone, they appear to be inviting individuals to look at proven documents and actions and take a stand. As for the rest of Keith Elliott's letter to the editor, I believe my time is too precious to debate with someone who appears to have formed an opinion on the one-sided biased narratives that we thought were true when we were growing up.
Debra Tilley
Barrie
