LETTER FOR THE EDITOR

Dear Sir:

(This is in response to “Thunder on the Right” column (April) by Paul Jackson

Mister Jackson, I hate to be the one to disturb you up there in Dallas North, but your article has some loose and loony assumptions. Sorry, Alberta oil sands are too costly, too polluting, too little and too late. The process is energy inefficient, causes too much pollution, uses too much of your fellow Canadian’s water and what are you going to do with the waste? And you can only supply a very small amount of US daily oil needs.

Maybe you in Alberta don’t realize it, but the rest of good and polite people in Canada, (No names please) are taking less and less of a liking to the “blue eyed Arab” Albertans exploiting all the natural resources. Don’t worry, you are safe as long as Harper is in power, but let one of those “left coast liberals” from B.C. or, merci beau coup, a French Canadian from Montreal take control and ….

Finally, to predict (and wish for) oil at $225 a barrel is, excuse the crude joke, only a wet dream for the folks in Dallas North. Yeah, it would be great, you could buy up the rest of Canada. $225 oil would, your guess is as good as mine or Jeff Rubin’s, equate to $8-$10 US a gallon for gasoline. At that price how many industries in the US, Canada and world-wide would crash? Let me count: Anything to do with a car, plane, train or boat, plastics, oh, heck, and the list just goes on and on. It won’t happen. To predict otherwise is a scare tactic of the conservative right to keep the status quo. But let me scare you.

I PREDICT! If the price of oil goes to $225 a barrel a new word will come to the lips of good Americans and Canadians, actually it might be several words. One is: Windfall profit tax and other (better sit down Dallas North) nationalization. Better be careful what you wish for Dallas North.

Michael G McLaughlin

Ajijic