Editor, The Times:
In one of my insightful conversations with my twin daughters I learned that, in getting their university degrees (one has a Bachelors in Pacific Rim studies, the other a Masters in town and ecological planning from Queen’s University) they had to take extensive business courses.
“And you know dad,’ said my daughter Vanessa, “the business world is where they don’t stress or even teach ethics.”
What, don’t teach ethics? The business world? Maybe that explains the great ‘screwups’: Enron, Tyco, Parmalat, etc and the financial meltdown of 2007 – 08.
Let’s see what we can get away seems to be the corporate world’s approach to things.
Just the other day, I read in the Vancouver Sun about how the fish farm industry would feed the world. Oh, how glorious!
Nowhere mentioned were the escapes of thousands, indeed ten of thousands, of Atlantic salmon into the waters of B.C. — a number of them now nesting in rivers like the Nimpkish.
Plus there was no mention of the infestation of lice on the migrating fingerlings, especially in the Broughton Archipelago. Of course, the names Alexandra Morton or David Suzuki were not mentioned.
Instead it was glorious fish forming — 100 per cent ‘pure as the driven snow.’
Again maybe this lack of ethics in the business world explains why the energy sector, both in Canada and the USA, can claim that fracking (hydraulic fracturing) does not cause pollution of groundwater.
Never mind Rosebud, Alberta (east of Fort St. John) and all the areas in Canada and the United States with undrinkable groundwater, not to mention earthquakes and escaping poisonous gases that have occurred after the search for shale gas has been completed.
No, all must be sacrificed. The quest for energy self sufficiency must trump everything, including environmental sanity.
All through life, compromises must be made in order to make things liveable.
However, when ethics are compromised beyond the point of no return, there are consequences.
All of them bad.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
