Letter: Quebec’s advantages all too many

By Letter to the Editor on January 16, 2021.

Dear editor,

From 1963 to 1970, the FLQ terrorist group was responsible for 200 bombings, many robberies and the death of six people. Out of the FLQ’s actions rose Rene Levesque’s Parti Quebecois.

Federal Liberal governments since the 1970 October crisis have given in to Quebec demands. For example, Quebec is exempt from the federal government’s Carbon Tax. This gives them a significant competitive advantage over other provinces in Canada. Quebec is given $13.2 billion of the $19.1 billion Equalization Grant. The Energy East pipeline that was to feed crude oil into Atlantic Canada was stopped at the Quebec border because Quebec did not want it.

Yet, Quebec enjoyed billions of dollars in revenue from the West. Alberta has sent more money to the East than it has received for 55 years now. Quebec shows its gratitude to the West by accepting oil from countries with dictatorships, poor human rights records and poor environmental laws. Quebec, last year, had a $4.5 billion surplus and was talking about heated sidewalks in Montreal.

The dictators in the East are only interested in revenue from our resources.

The NDP want all hydrocarbons banned by 2040 and the Green Party sooner. The Liberals want hydrocarbons eliminated by 2050. This will make farming, forestry industries, mining and travel extremely expensive or non-existent. It is time to tell the East to keep their environmental laws, gun laws, federal debt and scandals, and look at terms of separation for Western Canada. Only then will we be masters of our own destiny.

Gordon Dykstra

North Battleford, Sask.

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