May’s credibility challenged
By Letter to the Editor on April 18, 2018.
The photograph of Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s arrest near Burnaby is really her whole political story. Nothing worthwhile for what taxpayers generously spend on her except her breaking of the law. A Member of Parliament who should lead in upholding and respecting the law displays her complete disregard for our fundamental principle — the rule of law.
Is anyone impressed? Probably small-minded people like herself. If she has concerns for the well-being of our environment, she wouldn’t only protest Kinder Morgan. She has never criticized Victoria and other west coast communities for pumping raw sewage into the Pacific. How many protests has she participated in because British Columbia decimates its forest to ship lumber in unit trains along the CPR mainline to southeastern United States? Has she protested that a monthly average of 20 tankers over three decades has hauled U.S. oil from Alaska down the Pacific through Juan de Fuca to the Seattle area for refining? When has she protested that 650,000 barrels of foreign oil imported daily by rail, pipeline and tanker for processing in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada?
The answers to the queries, of course, are in the negative. Now, the fossil-fuel industry is under attack by anti-capitalists, and the conventional energy industry is the fuel for that vehicle. Canada, with an overabundance of “pygmy politicians” like May, leads this attack.
Her comments that more oil processing should happen in Canada and that finished products should be exported is another example of misleading tendencies. Kinder Morgan 2 would have the capability to transport to the west coast both processed oil products and diluted bitumen, but she is protesting its construction. It has been virtually impossible to get a pipeline laid underground; what chance will an oil refinery have to get approval by our suffocating, over-regulated, anti-oil system? Nearly zero. Investors have already given up on our country for the application process is too costly, lengthy, and a high-risk for rejection.
The leading polluting nations in China, India and United States ignore the international Paris Agreement, and they continue their economic growth and development without any restrictions on the use of fossil fuels. But, her lips are sealed. She either doesn’t care, or is completely ignorant of what is happening elsewhere. It actually appears that it is a combination of both.
May was elected to the House of Commons by her constituents. She will choose her position on issues, which is her prerogative. It is evident that she does not adhere consistently to a set of principles. Yet, she has no reservation in moralizing about other politicians, individuals and their views? A phony without any credibility?
Larry Samcoe
Medicine Hat
