Editor, The Times:
In my more active days as an active activist I ran into quite a few wingnuts from the Left – those with pamphlets and hammers and sickles, yearning back to the good old days of Joseph Stalin and chairman Mao. Also, there were some quite violent types like the Black Bloc and some of the Steelworkers were a pretty rough tough bunch – especially in Quebec City.
My own union, UNIFOR, opposes this Transmountain twinning but not from any snails, whales, aboriginal or environmental concern. No, they went and got the facts!
It turns out that about 90 per cent of the Alberta tar already shipped down the pipe (which incidentally passes a few metres from my bedroom window) goes to the refineries in Washington where it is refined and sold back to us at outrageous prices.
Jim Lamberton was quite right in being outraged by all of this.
However, it’s not certain whether a boycott of the retail end of petroleum sales would do much good.
READ MORE: It’s time for a rotating gas boycott (May 20, 2018)
After all, this whole pump it down the pipe, don’t refine it here in Canada thing is all part of the Calgary petro-thugs’ scheme, which has been expressed through their mouthpieces the MacDonald-Laurier and Fraser institutes with a little climate change denial thrown in for good measure.
You can be sure that among the five thousand-plus anti-pipeline protesters in “New West’ there are a number of wingnuts and nut jobs. There always is!
However, there are those, like members of my union UNIFOR, who have all the facts and figures. Just the facts, Ma-am, said Joe Friday on the old TV detective show Dragnet. And the facts are just like the Potemkin prosperity of the Athabaska tar sands.
This pipeline twinning makes absolutely no sense whatever economically.
As to wingnuts? Well in this year of our Lord 2018 the right wing nut jobs outnumber the left wing members by what ratio? 10 – 1? 100 – 1? 1,000 – 1? Million – 1?
This goes right up into the White House where Trump and his revolving door imbeciles, brain dead and outright criminals rule the roost of still the most powerful country on the globe. And getting worse instead of better!
Opposing the Transmountain twinning because it will crush some snails on the way down doesn’t make much sense.
However opposing some because it appears to be a money-losing boondoggle. Doesn’t that make sense?
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.