On 8 February 2007 I read this article about the Tory government's attitude towards 'Net Neutrality which I found disturbing and I immediately emailed my local MP (Gary Goodyear), Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier my thoughts on this.
Today (technically yesterday since it is now after midnight) I received a response from Mr. Goodyear's office saying “...I wish to acknowledge receipt your letter of February 23, 2006, regarding your concerns on ‘Net Neutrality.’” Excuse me? February 23, 2006?!?!?
Now when I email my elected officials I don't expect a personally targetted reply and an invitation to in-depth dialog—I know they are busy people. However, I do expect a prompt acknowledgement, especially from my local MP. I also expect the staffer writing the reply to at least be marginally competent and properly reference things so I know that my MP has been made aware of my concerns.
Even if this is just bad writing on the staffer's part and they meant to say they were acknowledging receipt on 2007/02/23 (4 days from receipt to acknowledgement), the fact that it took them so long to reply is just terrible. It's also the first email of the last 2.5 years since I moved to Cambridge that my MP's office has responded to, and they took three weeks less two days to do it.
When I lived in Kitchener (Kitchener-Wilmot riding, specifically) I got an acknowldgement froma staffer within 5 business days and, occasionally, a direct response from my MP within 2 weeks. They certainly didn't take almost three weeks to merely acknowledge.
Now I'm unlikely to vote Conservative in any event, but this seeming lack of competence from my MP's office certainly isn't going to raise my faith in my current MP.
Well, it seems that somebody other than my Mom is reading my blog. :-)
ReplyDeleteAt shortly after 9am this morning an email appeared in my inbox, from the same person who send the original acknowledgement:
Hi Cory,
Please accept my apologies for my typing error, unfortunately mistakes do happen. Mr. Goodyear is very well aware of your concern and it has been addressed with the Minister of Industry-Maxime Bernier. I am just waiting for a response from them.
If you would like a call from Mr. Goodyear, I will gladly put you on his call list. Please advise.
Enjoy your day,
I wonder how she came across my blg, though. It is Blogger, which is owned by Google, so I assume it would get indexed quite fast, but I don't advertise it so unless you're doing a specific search like “Gary Goodyear Cory” you'ld probably never know about it.
Very interesting.