Editor: Re: “Oil on water,” (The Times, April 19).
Like so many Langley folk, I cannot buy the notion that Big Oil is just a good sport who plays totally fair, in favour of its profit margins and all of our eco-concerns.
Sure, we have Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who is “fiercely opposed” to the quintupling of tanker traffic due to pipeline development because “it means unacceptable risk of an oil spill and massive cost to our economy and our environment.”
He then promises that Vancouver will voice its opposition to the federal government-appointed National Energy Board members, as though they are likely to decide against the Vancouver expansion or the Northern Gateway pipeline project, for that matter.
Sorry, but oil sands projects proponent Stephen Harper and company know they’ll one way or another have the last say, thus making Robertson’s opposition futile, except perhaps for some political grandstanding points, regardless of Robertson’s sincerity in his environmental concerns.
What we need is for all of the marchers and protesters — and especially the strong-willed determination of the aboriginal nations who have much to lose in the matter and refuse to be bought out regardless of their frequent poverty status — who are dead against such pipeline construction to translate their verbal steam into physical obstruction to any pipeline construction on B.C. territory.
Frank G. Sterle, Jr.,
White Rock
