Dear Charles,
I supported you in your battle against police action since
the beginning of the section 301 arrest and search. As you know, I supported
you from principle, knowing virtually nothing about you before. You have now been vindicated, the police
action universally condemned, and I am pleased at the outcome.
As I looked into the past actions against you by public
officials, I believed that in those dealings with the governments and police, you
acted upon sound principles such as environmental protection, decent social
assistance, and fair and equal justice.
Your recent endorsement of Mayor Woodside for another term
of office seems based entirely on unsubstantial grounds and even contrary to
principles you claim to stand for.
Brad Woodside has been Mayor of Fredericton for 28
years. He has obviously done a lot for
the City, and has many accomplishments to be proud of. However, the world has changed quite
dramatically in recent years and Mayor Woodside is n longer the most
appropriate candidate for the job. There
are a number of serious missteps recently that can be traced to Mayor Woodside’s
inabilities.
First, it is clear that Woodside neither understands nor
properly executes his role in supervising the Fredericton Police Force. He has a legal responsibility to ensure that
Council establishes and supervises the operations of the Police Force. Council has failed in this, and that failing
falls principally on Woodside. Worse,
Woodside has seriously equivocated, on one hand affirming a close relationship with
the Police Chief, on the other hand distancing himself from police actions when
they turn out to be unpopular.
Second, Woodside has shown a lack of understanding of and
disdain for the law. Again, he wishes to
flout the law when it is popular to do so, yet tacitly appeal to law against an
unpopular cause. In a nutshell, Woodside
flouted the law in evicting the Occupy protestors without proper legal
authority or Court sanction. Yet,
because the eviction of Occupy was popular, he acts as if they are miscreants, whereas
the best advice that has been presented to the public is that the Occupiers
broke no laws at all. They were acting within
their rights as citizens.
Third, Woodside effectively stood by while your rights were
blatantly abused by the Fredericton Police.
He hid behind legality where common sense and a small bit of courage may
have enhanced his reputation and saved a great deal of grief and expense for
the City of Fredericton, not to mention your dignity and peace of mind. Who would have complained had he intervened
to end a reckless and illegal action by police against a citizen of the City?
Finally and more generally, Woodside is clearly out of touch
with the expectations of accountability and transparency that suit the current
age. He has equivocated on shale gas and
on providing decent care to the disadvantaged in the City. He has engaged in real estate adventures of
debatable merit or worse without sufficient, disinterested citizen engagement
to enable public assessment of merit.
In conclusion, Charles, it looks to me like you have supported
the Mayor based mainly on your personal interests and contrary to principles
that I thought we hold in common. Of
course it is your absolute right to have and share your own opinions regardless
of any cost in esteem from me and any others that may find the reasons you give
for your endorsement to be trivial and essentially self serving.
Regards,
Peter Dauphinee
May 11, 2012
May 11, 2012
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