Take a pill, Wente

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente has no right to call Canada’s north a “welfare ghetto,” Iqaluit East MLA Ed Picco told the legislative assembly on Monday.

Picco was responding to a Jan. 6 article in which Wente slammed the Newfoundland government for its efforts to strike a resource-sharing deal with the federal government.

Rural Newfoundland, along with our great land north of 60, is probably the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world, Wente wrote.

“The economic stimulus from Ms. Wente’s supposed ghetto is well welcomed by the thousands of people employed in the South because of… the people north of 60,” said Picco, originally a Newfoundlander.

“I say pipe down, Margaret Wente, and take a pill… The only ghetto here is in Margaret Wente’s head. And, Mr. Speaker, that’s a big hole to fill.”