Letter to Globe & Mail. OIL CONSUMPTION and NATION-BUILDING: THE PREQUEL? With more wool over the eyes than was needed to supply the needs of a knitter making sweaters for the whole family, given existing media and telecom co-ownerships, I was frankly and pleasantly surprised to read Konrad Yakabuski’s de-bunking column, “Canada’s hang-up with foreign mobile.” (Comment, A 11, August 1st) Now after the Lac Mégantic tragedy and the information published about how the shipping of hazardous goods are contracted to various rail operators across the country, we need similar yarns about the possible best choices for domestic production of oil and its refining for domestic use. Your cumulative reporting on oil tell us that foreign oil comes into Montreal for refining and domestic oil is being sent to the East coast (or planned West coast) to be shipped for export. Earlier we have been told that possible inland refineries – that might serve domestic consumption locatable in say Alberta, Saskatchewan or even Ontario are not on the drawing board because they would not supply a large enough margin of profit. It’s a pity we as nation have ‘evolved’ to become so myopic and allergic to state ownership. Instead we are being bombarded by a very different oil “nation-builder” proposal that is primarily about strengthening uneven shares of public and private revenue generation from oil. What could be worth learning at this juncture is what is feasible (and worthy of public risk) for the continued domestic consumption of domestic oil. Would such a review help amend the considerable public impositions and unrewarded public risk that is being rationalized for the export profit from our oil? I’m hardly the only citizen believing that if the Government of Canada is to continue allotting more than $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies to oil, gas and coal then the current refiners, i.e. Irving, Valero or Suncor in New Brunswick and Québec should be required by license or by law to help offset the clean up costs of spills and other damage caused by the shipments of their raw materials? The current federal government stood its ground over its telecommunication policy. Now it needs political pressure for it to act with similar backbone i.e. for the greater (not smaller) public good with regards to its energy policy around the use of publicly owned or regulated energy and related transportation resources.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 17:26:09 +0000
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