March 10, 2018: Indigenous leaders, Coast Salish Water Protectors and others demonstrate against the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline project in Burnaby, B.C.JASON REDMOND/Getty Images
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A country divided
Re Ottawa, Alberta Look To Finance Trans Mountain (April 10): Alberta’s growth rate was 4.5 per cent last year, with another 2.7 per cent projected this year. It has some of the best job-creation numbers in Canada.
This is occurring without the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, which we have been told repeatedly is all that stands between Alberta and economic ruin. Whatever these Chicken Littles think, the sky is not held up by a pipeline, and both the province and the country are doing just fine without it.
Alberta also argues it needs the increased resource royalties afforded by the pipeline expansion to pay down its debt. Rather than endangering B.C.’s coast and waterways, compounding global warming, and outraging First Nations opposed to the project, Alberta should consider three little words: provincial sales tax.
Gregory Millard, Port Moody, B.C.
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Hypocrisy is rampant when it comes to pipelines. Opposition in Quebec to Energy East was as big as it is now in B.C. with Trans Mountain. I have been in both provinces many times. Both have hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks on their roads, planes landing and taking off, people heating their homes and so on. Where do these people think the energy comes from?
We should be working to lower our carbon footprint, but it can only happen over time. Meanwhile, everyone – protesters included – burns fossil fuels in some manner or other.
Yes, hypocrisy is rampant, and that hypocrisy is now leading to a major constitutional mess, which may fracture our country irreparably. And just to add a bit more frosting to this cake, the B.C. government is working on an LNG plant and pipeline to take advantage of B.C.’s gas resource.
Hypocrisy writ large.
Peter Belliveau, Moncton
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Energy East was proposed as a way to take oil from Alberta to refineries in the East, replacing imported oil from the Mideast. There was pushback from Quebec and others for environmental reasons and the project was shelved. I doubt that the federal government would try to force Quebec to accept a pipeline in the “national interest.”
The current NDP government is trying to protect our coastal waters. It is now being bullied by Alberta and the federal government in the “national interest.”
Why isn’t the bitumen being refined in Alberta? That would create a lot of permanent jobs.
Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, why isn’t more money being invested in renewable resources?
Is Kinder Morgan, concerned the pipeline may not be economically viable in the long term, trying to make B.C. take the blame for the cancellation?
If the pipeline is forced on British Columbia, it could be a case of relatively short-term gain for Alberta and long-term pain for B.C. We may see a future PM apologizing to British Columbia.
Stephanie Greer, North Saanich, B.C.
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The “constitutional crisis” between Alberta and British Columbia will seem like a tempest in a teapot compared to what will occur if Newfoundland and Labrador demands transmission right-of-way through Quebec when the Churchill Falls-Hydro Quebec contract expires in 2041.
Larry Hughes, Halifax
Ditch the media bus
Re: Mettle Detector (April 10): Contained within your editorial on Doug Ford, the leader of the Ontario PC Party, is the answer to why he is avoiding the media. When you use descriptions such as “a hot-tempered opportunist with a penchant for dishonesty,” why would he expect fair media coverage? I’m inclined to agree with him – ditch the media bus!
Noreen Kincaid, Toronto
Trucks. And pink shoes
Re Gender And Kids (April 10): Like letter writer Catherine Fitton, I, too, gave my son toys associated with both sexes. He, too, loved cars and ignored the doll, and was keen to watch construction workers. However, he did love his sparkly pink shoes and wearing princess dresses. That is, until age 4, which is when he learned at daycare that boys and girls were different and immediately stopped any stereotypical feminine behaviour.
I could see it broke his heart to give up the shoes, but the social pressure from his four-year-old peers to conform had already won, no matter what I said or did.
I believe that if all children were taught to embrace the full spectrum of being human, this wouldn’t have happened.
(By the way, research into sex differences in the eyes suggests that that love of cars and trucks may be linked to the way males see differently than females. Males are more attracted to movement, probably due to our hunter-gatherer past, when males were the hunters and needed to see their prey.)
Dougall Newport, Kitchener, Ont.
Wanted: Fewer crashes
Re The Humbolt Team Bus Crash Is A Tragic Reminder That We Need Safer Roads (April 10): André Picard says we have to make our roads safer. I agree. And I suggest we do as our European and Asian neighbours have done: Install “roundabouts.”
Roundabouts have been proven safer for a number of reasons, including that the driver must slow to enter, and that the angle of cars crashing is less severe than the “T-bone.”
Rick Walker, Toronto
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André Picard is spot on when he reminds us of the risks of vehicle crashes. In both the developed and the developing world, traumatic injury is the leading cause of death from age one to 45 years, with motor vehicle crashes leading the list. (After 45, the diseases of aging start to take their toll.)
And for each trauma death, there will be five people who are severely disabled, from head or spinal cord injury, or amputation. Yet when Canadian parents are surveyed about the biggest risks to their children, they cite diabetes, cancer or obesity. Instead, it is trauma, with motor crashes leading, followed by falls. Car seats, seat belts and bike helmets are quick answers.
Trauma research, in Canada and elsewhere, still receives far less funding than other medical issues, for example, hypertension. One reason may be that Big Pharma can’t develop a profitable pill to prevent injury …
Paul J. Moroz, MD, University of Hawaii, Department of Surgery
Hmm ...
Watson (reading the newspaper): Oh no, Holmes! The snatch and grab of a stone inscribed by Yoko (Police Looking For Suspect In Theft Of Rock At Yoko Ono Exhibit, April 9)!
Holmes: Snatch and grab? More like a rock and roll.
Watson: Apparently the inscription on the rock was “love yourself.”
Holmes: That will prove difficult for the thief. Her slate is not clean.
Watson: But can this treasure ever be replaced?
Holmes: Easily, my dear Watson. It’s sedimentary.
Rudy Buller, Toronto