Editor:
Re: “Paying for pipeline is beyond the pale,” Editorial, April 20.
The fact that I find very interesting about the federal government wanting to financially support the pipeline is that nobody I have come across has commented on the same government’s commitment to spend $1.5 billion on “a world-class spill response program.” A world-class spill response would recover about 18 per cent of the spilled oil, but that is not what interests me. What interests me is that we taxpayers are about to spend $1.5 billion so foreign companies can transport diluted bitumen on our coast.
If I wanted to transport some sort of dangerous cargo across a neighbour’s property and I assured the neighbour that there was very little danger, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the neighbour said, “Well, that’s all well and good, but why don’t you just post a bond so that if there is a problem, you will be paying for it and not me?”
That’s why we are legally required to have car insurance – if we do something stupid, the other party doesn’t have to pay. I’m just having a little difficulty understanding why we, the Canadian taxpayer, should be fronting the $1.5 billion and not those who are profiting by the transport of oil on my coast.
As a former U.S. government official is reputed to have said, “A billion here, a billion there – pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
Peter M. Heiberg, Gibsons
