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Steel pipes that were to be used in the Trans Mountain expansion project at a stockpile site in Kamloops, B.C., Aug. 30, 2018.Dennis Owen/The Globe and Mail

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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Disunited we roll?

Much as I hope United We Roll shames Ottawa’s politicians into action, it will take a miracle to get more pipeline capacity in this country (Scheer Backs Pipeline Convoy In Ottawa, Feb. 20).

Disunited We Roll is closer to the truth: We can’t even get our act together to get our own energy to the East Coast, relying instead on Saudi crude. Our treatment of Alberta is shameful, our hypocrisy on pipelines even more so, particularly in Quebec.

Hannah Schmidt, Winnipeg

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As United We Roll drives home the message Canada needs more pipelines, I recall your report that Alberta’s Energy Regulator has estimated that the cost to clean up the mess from the province’s oil and gas industry may be $260-billion (A Trade In Ticking Time Bombs – Nov. 24, 2018). Are there no jobs in the clean-up industry?

Barb Heidenreich, Bailieboro, Ont.

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The protesters from Alberta should turn their convoy of trucks around, head to Edmonton and demand that Alberta start taxing itself at realistic rates.

Alberta’s government website boasts about Alberta’s “overall tax advantage compared to other provinces, with no sales tax, no payroll tax and no health premium.” A chart for 2018-19 on the site estimates the “total additional provincial tax and carbon charges that individuals and businesses would pay if Alberta had the same tax system and carbon charges as other provinces.” Compared to B.C.: $11.2-billion. Compared to Ontario: $14.1-billion. Compared to Quebec:$20.6-billion.

With realistic taxes, the protesters could be put to work cleaning up the thousands of abandoned wells; there would also be ample money to retrain for jobs in other fields. The oil and gas industry will be around for a long time, but it can’t keep growing like it has over the past 20 years. It’s time for Alberta to face reality and prepare for a different future – while it still has the fiscal capacity to do so.

Kim Smith, Ottawa

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Is anyone observing the parallel between the lack of sympathy the country is showing for Quebeckers over SNC-Lavalin, with Canadians’ similar indifference to the impact on Albertans of not being able to get their oil to market? Is either situation really so different from what’s about to happen to Ontarians in Oshawa?

Good jobs are good jobs, wherever in Canada they happen to be. If being a citizen of this country means anything, it seems to me that we should care passionately about threats to the living standards and well-being of Canadians, no matter which province they happen to live in.

Based on the overall content of Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Konrad Yakabuski’s voice struck me as lonely and brave (Must We Save SNC-Lavalin? It Depends Which Solitude’s Side You’re On). I can only hope readers will appreciate the importance of his message.

Barbara Sulzenko-Laurie, Waterloo, Ont.

B.C.’s fiscal prowess

Re Canada’s New Economic Power: British Columbia (Feb. 20): So B.C. is the economic powerhouse in Canada. And B.C. has a carbon tax. Hmm.

Dorothy Watts, Vancouver

Scheer as leader?

Re Will Andrew Scheer Seize His Opportunity To Lead? (Feb. 19): If Andrew Scheer were truly “the leader Canada needs,” it would be self-evident to us, the led.

Peter White makes no case for the Conservative Leader’s alleged leadership prowess simply by pointing to what is said to be Justin Trudeau’s leadership failure on issues such as the Trans Mountain pipeline, steel tariffs and the Meng Wanzhou extradition, because he does not tell us what Mr. Scheer might have done differently to achieve better results.

The “achievements” of Mr. Scheer to which Mr. White does point – all in the nature of getting elected to positions – hardly give one confidence.

Mr. White should reread his Shakespeare before paraphrasing him. Shakespeare placed the quotes to which Mr. White refers into the mouths of Brutus and Malvolio. Things didn’t end well for either of those characters.

John D. Whyte, North Vancouver

MDs, guns

Re Smart Gun Control Is A Doctor’s Business (Feb. 19): The Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights has done a lot more to doctors calling for stricter gun control than simply telling them to “stay in their lane.”

Postings and videos recommend that coalition members complain to physician licensing colleges about doctors who speak out in favour of gun control. The coalition claims that the fatal consequences of guns are far less than the sometimes poor outcomes of medical treatments.

Medicine, unlike gun ownership, is a vocation, the sole and universal purpose being to relieve suffering. It is grotesque to compare the fatal consequences of gun use to the imperfections of medicine, the modern practise of which has saved millions of lives – hardly a description that applies to unwarranted gun ownership.

Medicine and guns can never be breathed in the same sentence except when talking about medicine saving humans from the hazards of guns.

Bullies are bad enough.

Bullies with guns are worse.

Philip B. Berger, MD, Toronto

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A ban will do nothing to stop the flood of guns crossing our southern border, and thus tacitly supports a liberal agenda which nonsensically equates gun bans with safety. Donald Trump employs similar illogic with respect to the Mexican border.

Dale Armstrong, London, Ont.

The ones that got away

Re Choosing To Be Vegan (letters, Feb. 20): Perhaps a fish-eating person can’t be a vegetarian. But is keeping a giant gourami in an aquarium, denying the fish its natural habitat, any more morally defensible than eating one?

Ann Sullivan, Peterborough, Ont.

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I concur that a fish-eating person cannot call themselves a vegetarian. That’s why, as a plant-only eater who enjoys the occasional sushi, I refer to myself as a “veg-aquarian.”

Kate Soles, Victoria

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The debate about veganism brought to mind the pangs of guilt over the wrongs of my childhood that overwhelmed me when I recently read Fish Are Not Office Decorations (Opinion, Feb. 9). Unfortunately, in those younger days, I fell, hook, line and sinker, for the idea that pet goldfish were cool, and that freshly caught, lightly pan-fried bass were delicious cottage breakfasts.

Had I only known that my poor piscatorial victims could plan, remember, innovate, collaborate, keep accounts, show virtue, etc., I’d have set them all free, and told them to get on with their lives and do something useful.

“But what should we do?” they might have asked. “Well, there’s a dearth of your amazing ‘achievements’ in politics, for one!” I’d have said.

Ah, well, no point in carping about it now …

Peter A. Lewis-Watts, Barrie, Ont.

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