Editor, The Times:
On the opinion pages of the Vancouver Sun there was a column by some young TD mouthpiece about how wonderful this new free trade agreement that Harper signed with China was. Oh glorious, the wealth and riches that would flow from this!
Of course, in all of this the two pipelines, Kinder Morgan and Northern Gateway, figure very prominently.
However, with such right-wingers as Stockwell Day and Gordon Gibson firmly against these Alberta tar conduits, not to mention the tremendous opposition to Kinder Morgan from the good folks at Burnaby, just why are the powers that be so determined to push these dubious projects through?
When I want to talk to someone intelligent (beside talking to myself — Hah! Just kidding) I phone my youngest daughter to mull over the latest developments, i.e. the falling price of oil and all of its ramifications.
When the roughnecks are being laid off and activities being scaled back, why aren’t these pipeline projects being put on hold?
Well, explained my daughter, with all the wheeling and dealing that goes on, CINOC (the Chinese state-owned energy company) now owns a good portion of the Athabasca tar sands.
And they couldn’t care less how they get that tar, as long as they get it.
All these so-called free trade (It’s not free trade, as Lewis Lapham stated, it’s managed trade — managed strictly for a corporate agenda) deals with China have, in typical Canadian fashion, given away the store!
In other words, we Canadians, as Andrew Nikiforuk has pointed out, are not masters in our own house.
This is what that “suit” from Toronto Dominion thinks is a good idea? Oh, the banksters!
Don’t trust them with the economy.
Or the banks for that matter.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
