April 2003
Dear Friend,
Please! You and I must defeat Jerry Ouellette in the next Ontario election.
When Ernie Eves became Premier of Ontario, he made Jerry Ouellette Minister of Natural Resources. Eves was paying Ouellette back for helping him win the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. Ouellette -- abetted by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) had organized sport hunters to join the PC Party, and vote for Eves.
Eves could not have paid off anyone more malevolent, more despicable, nor more destructive than Jerry Ouellette.
For the sake of Ontario’s wild animals, our parks, and the preservation of our wilderness, help me end Jerry Ouellette’s political career.
I need you to help me with your generosity, and -- if you’re able -- your time.
I will use your contribution to campaign in Oshawa, Ouellette’s electoral district. Your generosity will help pay for polling, candidate research, a volunteer telephone bank, radio and television ads, the preparation and distribution of campaign literature, and the support of our volunteer door to door canvassers.
You can also help me with your time. I need people like you to canvas door to door, and on the telephone. You can work the phones here at our campaign headquarters, alongside your Environment Voters friends, or you can call from your own home.
Ouellette must go. He is a trophy hunter, who pleasures himself killing innocent animals. He even appeared in a National Rifle Association fund raising infomercial attacking Canada’s gun laws.
Ouellette’s fanaticism about guns and sport killing corrupts every policy decision he makes. He is mutating the Ministry of Natural Resources into the Ministry of Guns and Hunters.
Ouellette and Eves are destroying every gain we’ve ever made for wildlife, wilderness, and parks in Ontario. Remember the Spring bear hunt? A few weeks ago I received a confidential e-mail that read, in part,
“ … the OFAH is saying that they’ve been assured by the Tories that once the election is over the Spring Bear [Hunt] will be on the table again. This was being said in private to trusted hunters on the weekend at the OFAH conference in Hamilton. It comes from a reliable hunter friend that happens to know Terry Quinney [of the OFAH] …”
Let me give you another example of how vindictive Jerry Ouellette is to people who love wildlife, and who try to help -- rather than hunt -- them.
A dear friend, Donna DuBreuil, ran the Ottawa Carlton Wildlife Centre, until Jerry Ouellette closed her down. Donna’s centre was one of the finest wildlife rehabilitation operations in Ontario.
Jerry Ouellette’s goons at the Ministry of Natural Resources killed the wildlife centre, ostensibly because Donna was helping baby raccoons. The MNR has a policy of eradicating all raccoons even healthy ones in what they call “rabies hot zones.”
All Donna’s raccoons -- indeed, all Donna’s animals -- are rabies free. All are vaccinated. They pose no threat to other wildlife, or people. Donna and her volunteers were raising the orphaned raccoons until they could be released back into the wild.
Jerry Ouellette sent his MNR enforcement thugs -- backed up flack jacketed police officers -- to Donna’s wildlife centre. They raided Donna and her female staff. Seized the babies and an injured animal, shut the centre down, and revoked Donna’s wildlife rehabilitation licence.
Ernie Parsons, Liberal MPP for Prince Edward Hastings, went to Donna’s defense. Ernie was one of the people we got elected in the 1999 Ontario election. He is the Ontario Liberal Party’s natural resources critic.
Ernie said, in an interview in the Ontario Farmer, “They used 50 police officers to nail two women protecting raccoons. We didn’t treat Karla Homolka that bad.”
Ernie has been pressuring Ouellette to let Donna re open the centre, to no avail. Ernie has even tried to help the raccoons, who are being kept at the MNR’s Codrington research facility.
According to Ernie,
“… it’s particularly disturbing that the healthy raccoons are being caged separately, a practice in direct contravention of the MNR’s own standard of care.
“Experts tell me what the MNR is doing is unthinkable, and will likely result in the animals perishing following their release into the wild.”
The real reason Ouellette viciously attacked Donna and her volunteers, shut down her wildlife centre, and is punishing helpless baby raccoons is that Donna criticized him, and his rogue ministry’s wildlife policies.
(Donna, and her volunteers from the Ottawa Carlton Wildlife Centre, will be helping us campaign in the Ottawa area. Jerry Ouellette will rue the day he tried to stop Donna saving wild animals.)
Defeating Ouellette in the Ontario election (which could be called at anytime) will be difficult, but not because Ouellette is popular or well respected in Oshawa. In fact, in the 1999 election more people voted for Liberal and NDP candidates than for Ouellette. The problem is that the Liberals and NDP split the vote, which lets Ouellette win.
I’m convinced -- based on the voting histories from the 1995 and 1999 elections, and some preliminary research -- that Ouellette can be beaten. Between the ’95 and ’99 elections, for example, Ouellette’s percent of the vote declined by 14%.
The strategy that can beat Ouellette is campaigning on his neglect of Oshawa voters. Less than 5% of the voters in Oshawa hunt. Yet, Ouellette spends most of his time promoting sport hunting, and fighting gun regulations, not helping the people of Oshawa. Ouellette is not the MPP for Oshawa -- he is the “MPP for Guns and Hunters.”
Defeating Ouellette will do much more than just drive one bad politician out of the Ontario Provincial Parliament and the Ministry of Natural Resources. If we defeat Ouellette, we’ll have begun wresting control of Ontario’s wildlife and wilderness out of the hands of sport hunters.
Help me change Ontario politics, so that protecting wild animals wins more votes than killing animals … so that compassion helps win elections, and cruelty loses them.
Please -- to defeat Ouellette and change Ontario politics -- I must have your support. I need you to be as generous as you possibly can.
Since Environment Voters was established in 1999, we’ve campaigned -- thanks to your support -- in 20 elections. We know how to win. But, the key to winning is you. Your support. Your campaign contributions.
Please, I need you to send your contribution today. Premier Eves can call an election any day now.
We must do much more in this election than defeat Ouellette. We will target depending on the help you, and others like you, are able to give up to six other Progressive Conservative MPPs.
Defeating other Progressive Conservative MPPs is just as important as defeating Ouellette. The fact is that no matter how well we campaign to defeat Ouellette, we could lose. Nothing is certain in an election. We don’t want the PCs (or the Liberals and the NDP) to take a Ouellette win in Oshawa as proof that there are more votes in pandering to hunters than protecting wildlife and wilderness.
By targeting other PC incumbents -- most of whom we’ll defeat, given our track record -- you and I can make sure that, no matter what happens with Ouellette, the political parties will understand that bad wildlife and environmental policies are bad politics.
Wherever we run good election campaigns, animal, wildlife, and environmental policy begins to change for the better. Ernie Parsons championing Donna is just one example of what happens when we elect good politicians, and defeat poor ones. After our victories in the 1999 Ontario election, we even saw the Progressive Conservative party slowly begin to improve its environmental policies.
Tragically for wildlife and the environment, however, Premier Eves only talks “green,” despite the fact that his partner, Isabel Bassett, was one of the PC cabinet ministers we helped defeat in 1999. Promises about clean air and water, protecting forests, the Spring bear hunt are all being broken. Eves even opposed Prime Minister Chrétien signing the Kyoto greenhouse gas agreement.
I need your
help as soon as possible, today if you can. All of our campaign planning
depends on budget. Please don’t wait to make a contribution until
you hear the election has been called. Your gift is needed now.
Please help me defeat Jerry Ouellette.
Sincerely,
Stephen Best, Director
P.S. You can increase the effect of your contribution ten fold, by telling
politicians that you’re helping us. Included with this letter
is contact information for key people with the major parties. Please,
write, fax, telephone or e-mail them. Tell them you’ve made a
political contribution to the Environment Voters Ontario Election Campaign.
Politicians understand money. They know how important it is to winning
elections. Telling politicians that you’ve contributed to our
election campaign will have more influence on how our next government
views wildlife than anything else you could say to them.