Open letter to Innisfail mayoralty candidate Glen Carritt:
So you’re running for mayor. You want to lead our council and be the spokesperson for our town: to work with the community and move Innisfail forward.
Your methods are curious.
A few months ago, you impetuously quit town council mid-meeting, feeling a bit of pressure from other councillors for you not respecting the rules of municipal governance. They took exception to you supporting and encouraging a local business to defy a provincial health order. You traded in your responsibilities to your constituents, and your voice at council for a Rebel News spotlight.
You were found to have breached 29 sections of the Council Code of Conduct Bylaw.
You shamelessly disrespected and disregarded the Town’s Election Campaign Sign Policy.
On one of your videos, you blatantly misquoted a councillor’s words from a radio program from last year to put her in a bad light. Said councillor now being your opponent for the mayor’s chair.
With a modest caveat of not being a doctor, you have made egregious and reckless offerings of medical advice to your listeners.
You advise the best solution to prevent COVID-19 is vitamin D.
You tell them, “The first thing you shouldn’t do is trust your doctor…completely". “If you find a good doctor that talks about your health, and promotes vitamin D, and promotes exercise etc., I would stick with that doctor”.
You dissuade people from taking this “experimental” COVID vaccine.
You preach that “masks break down your immune system," explained by your simplistic view on the functions of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
This isn’t curious. This is dangerous!
And you’re running for mayor.
Then of course you continue your crusade, flagrantly defying current health restrictions, by hosting an outdoor gathering of hundreds of unmasked people. And your response to being fined? Schedule another. You have, however, since backed down.
For weeks you promoted an even bigger outdoor gathering of a nearby rodeo, of which you were a keynote speaker, taking place on the very day of record-high COVID-19 numbers in Alberta, the highest per population in North America. But it grabbed the national spotlight, didn’t it?
And your response? Announce plans for yet an even bigger three-day July 1 mini-Westerner Days party.
You and your self-proclaimed majority of anti-maskers-vaxxers-and-lockdowners, have opted to exercise your precious freedom of choice, by not helping in the fight against COVID-19. You have and will undoubtedly cause further delays in our lives, businesses, and economy re-opening to an invigorating and exciting future – ostensibly the very thing you are fighting for.
Your methods continue to bring the worst kind of publicity to our town - the kind that can cause new businesses and families to be wary of moving here. The kind that moves Innisfail backward.
Hopefully, come election time, this great mess will be mostly in our rear-view mirrors. So, other than your nebulous support of small business, especially those that defy health orders, and your further fixing of Edmonton and Ottawa, will you be informing the electorate of Innisfail of your platform, of what you would do for us if you were elected? Because, well…you’re running for mayor…aren’t you?
Jim Carroll,
Innisfail
