Editor:
Recently Enbridge Northern Gateway ran prominent banner ads in online newspapers and magazines inviting people to visit their website, ask questions and have them answered. I asked the question below. They didn’t post my question or provide an answer, but perhaps local readers could offer some insight.
“You ran full page ads in our local paper featuring a local business owner and an association director as being supportive of Northern Gateway. Both persons said they had been misquoted and were in fact not supportive. Word of this got around our small village. Later you brought environmentalist turned tar sands advocate Patrick Moore to town. He told us we needn’t worry as the pipeline would be ‘off in the hinterland’. Actually the line would run adjacent to our village and across our local creeks and lakes. Then you ran TV ads featuring a Douglas Channel miraculously cleared of all its’ islands, creating the deliberately false impression that the Kitimat harbour has clear, open access to the ocean. Several media sources pointed out that deception. My question is this: How do you expect to build credibility as a competent and trustworthy entity when you repeatedly use obviously deceptive PR practices?”
Do you want to entrust these people with building and operating a massive pump station and very high pressure, very high volume toxic sludge pipe just uphill of our village? Based on their record, I wouldn’t trust them further than I could throw them. And the security guards they like to bring along to meetings (why?) are pretty hefty.
Walter van der Kamp
Burns Lake, B.C.
