For Immediate Release:
December 15, 2011
On the eve of the Christmas Holidays, bureaucratic indifference, political foot-dragging condemn Canadian farmer to wither away on foreign shores
Beirut - Hendrik Tepper's hopes of coming home to his distraught family for Christmas -- or anytime soon -- are quickly dying.
The New Brunswick potato farmer did everything by the book in his efforts to broker quality potatoes from his and other Eastern Canadian farms to international buyers and to keep a few more jobs in the region.
Instead of the support and recognition one would expect from the Canadian Government, Mr. Tepper is being swept under the rug and forgotten in the Middle East.
Bureaucratic foot dragging and political apathy have so far thwarted efforts to bring Mr. Tepper home to his family.
In an eleventh-hour bid to repatriate the farmer, a Canadian delegation of two Senators has accompanied Mr. Tepper's legal counsel to Beirut to make a personal appeal to the Lebanese government.
"Lebanon is being made an unwitting party to an abuse of process", says Pierrette Ringuette, the New Brunswick Senator involved in the file. "This senseless situation could have been resolved weeks -- even months -- ago. All the Lebanese have been waiting for is a clear request from Ottawa to send our farmer home. But instead of an official one-sentence request that would bring Mr. Tepper home to defend his interests, we get a deafening silence that is effectively imposing a life sentence on Henk to see him rot away in a foreign detention centre."
"This is a national disgrace."
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For Additional Information:
Tim Rosenburgh
Office of Senator Pierrette Ringuette
(613) 943-2248