Dear sir,
Some more about the loyalty of North American politicians to their country, communities and people.
This happened about a year ago but has great relevance into the future.
The defeated Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain (Sarah Palin’s side kick) has introduced legislation to abolish the Jones Act.
This Act was created during the Alaska/Yukon gold rush to protect Seattle merchants. As a result, only ships built, owned, crewed and operated by American citizens’ entities are allowed to operate between American ports.
It has since gained several other advantages for the Americans except for multinational corporations.
When the Exxon Valdez disaster happened it was known precisely who was to be held accountable and who was to pay for compensation and clean up (the fisheries are not back after 22 years from a relatively small oil spill).
With the Jones Act gone, flag of convenience ships can and will be used. As has been shown a number of times in the past, it is nearly impossible to find out who owns the ships in order to get compensation.
The tax payer is on the hook.
Canadian raw materials are exported in order to have ships built, crewed, operated by foreign workers often with questionable standards.
The multinational companies make huge profits and their top executives receive disgustingly obscene remuneration which they can invest in estates in Provence, Tuscany or Lake Como, etc.
And Kitimat!?
Present traffic in and out of Kitimat is 252 ships a year with a size generally up to 40,000 DWT (dead weight tonnes).
Northern Gateway’s projection is 225 VLCC (Very Large Crude Carriers).
And LNG’s projection at this time 175,
That’s a total of 652 vessels/year.
Add to that the north south traffic crossing the route in and out of Kitimat.
Mayor Monaghan told the Financial Post (July 1) that she would like to see as many companies as possible build a “clean business that we can deal with”, adding we have 70 miles of channel that are open for business.
And being courted by the world’s energy giants as a place to do business feels “absolutely fantastic…you can put it in big print”.
How much would the increase in traffic be?
Any increase will increase chances of an incident with a DilBit (diluted bitumen) carrying crude carrier.
Before any more projects involving marine traffic and marine access are proposed, would it not be prudent indeed necessary to do an independent risk analysis, one not sponsored and paid for by a project proponent?
Who are our elected officials working for? The people or the big multinational corporations?
Dieter Wagner.
