Tag: elitism

Elitism from… the NDP

From Pique Newsmagazine (Whistler BC),

Helen Kormendy, a councillor with the Village of Ashcroft, will be taking [Conservative Chuck Strahl] on under the NDP banner, while Barbara Lebeau, a veteran of the legal profession, will carry the flag for the Greens. The Liberal Party has not yet appointed a candidate in Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon.

…

Kormendy currently serves as a councilor with the Village of Ashcroft, where she lives. A lifelong New Democrat, she has also worked as a social worker in child protection and family support, and has also worked as a mediator for people who were divorcing.

But what really separates Kormendy from Strahl is education, according to her.

“I guess the only thing that’s different about me too with Chuck Strahl is that I’m educated,” she said. “Not to say he isn’t in a formal way, I have three degrees.

“He comes out of a high school and goes into the workforce. I come out of high school, I work for a while and since then I have a formal education. I have a degree in political science, minor anthropology… I have a degree in social work… and I also have a master’s of social work from UBC.”

The mask slips

The Conservatives have run advertising comparing Liberal leader Stephane Dion to an out-of-touch academic who doesn’t care about the priorities of average hard-working Canadians.

In this video that I captured from a press conference Dion gave in Richmond BC just minutes ago, Dion says “I like to have a lot of PhDs in Canada but we need also to have plumbers, and all the skilled workers that are needed must have the ability to come here in Canada. Not only PhDs”

While Stephane Dion would like to have Canada populated by like-minded academics like himself, he seems to begrudgingly concede that Canada also needs plumbers.

Imagine if you were somebody with skills that the Prime Minister of Canada only needed rather than liked.

I received an email from a reader which reads,