Since we started exposing the Disability Support Scandal, there has been a concerted effort on the part of the Government and the Progressive Conservative Party of PEI to discredit any negative publicity. It took a new low today when Nelson Hagerman called me mid-afternoon to postpone my presentation to the Charlottetown Rotary until late in the Spring. I knew then the election was going to be called soon.
When I first offered to give an innocuous presentation on Disability on PEI in January 2007, the President of Charlottetown Rotary agreed it would be informative to hear it. He said the presentation committee would call me.
Then I get the phone call from Nelson Hagerman an old-time PC operative and party fund raiser. His wife had been appointed Lieutenant Governor and Nelson would have to be politically neutral from then on. Nelson sent out press releases that he was no longer political.
Nelson was pretty incensed about the whole idea. He questioned my right to speak on a disability topic despite having given at least 8 presentations to Rotary on a similar topic. ‘Shouldn’t someone else give the presentation?’ he suggested. In a bold attempt to limit free speech, he asked me to go over the contents of of my speech. I don’t think any presenter at a Rotary has been subjected to such blatant censorship.
Nelson literally threatened to hit me if I said anything embarrassing about the Government, the ruling PC Party. Guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I started to laugh somewhat nervously at the image of 6 and a half foot Nelson Hagerman standing over 4 and a half foot me in my wheelchair and his hand is out stretched to hit me. He persisted so I kept trying to jolly him up.
Somehow I talked him out of hitting me and letting me speak. It was all set to go until I had a death in the family and had to postpone.
Nelson’s next date was in early May. He was still breathing fire and brimstone on my head should the government be embarrassed by my presentation. He was so incensed he was almost incoherent. I knew the game: put me off outside the expected election zone.
When Nelson called me today I knew it meant an election was expected during the time I would speak. Nelson wouldn’t want the public to think about Islanders with disabilities during an election. Why his good buddies in the Government might have to pay attention to the disabled, help them out. Even worse they might lose a vote.
I told Nelson I knew his game. He laughed nervously. I got a new date in June for my speech. On the CBC supper news they announced an expected mid-May vote. The PC Party will be safe: Disability Alert will be silenced during the election.
So here we have the husband of the Lieutenant Governor called up a disability advocate trying to limit free speech, physically threatening him, using vulgar and profane language, intimidation, and obstruction of the free dissemination of ideas. What has PEI become, a backwater dictatorship in the Third World?
In the work I’ve done for Islanders with disabilities, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in how this government wants to treat information. They want to restrict information and public criticism. It smacks of a police state. I thought we had all been warned enough by Nineteen Eighty-Four and other literature.
Beware of a government that seeks to control public discourse, free speech, and dissent. This one is a text book case of people doing anything to hold onto power. Scary.
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