Re: “Little to learn from a month on welfare,” Leader letters, Dec. 6.
By living for a month on the amount a welfare recipient earns, pioneer MLA Jagrup Brar brilliantly establishes that no politician can understand and hence represent the needs and best interests of her or his constituents if he or she earns more than them.
All politicians’ and civil servants’ salaries should be pegged at the average wage earned: a calculation which should include welfare recipients and take into account the wages of zero earned by those who live on the street without any social assistance, who volunteer, and who care for their children and elderly parents without any financial compensation.
Additional income (even spousal) beyond this true-average-wage-based salary should be frozen until the politician has left office. And both politicians and civil servants (especially with TransLink) should be issued bus passes instead of being paid car allowances so they must literally rub shoulders with we peasants they so often seem to find “revolting.”
Don DeMille
Delta