I was asked recently why I have been dwelling on my life more than my opinions. Good question, except I have been writing an Epistle and letters tend to be less opinionated. However, lest you think I can no longer think, I thought I would provide you with some thoughts that have been percolating later within my head.

Today’s thought actually came to me a day or two ago when I heard about the Governor of the State of Washington, standing firmly beside the Premier of British Columbia, giving him support for BC’s attempt to stop a pipeline being built and the concomitant tanker traffic out of Vancouver.

What is it about NDP Premiers that they never seem to understand business folk, especially those pulling the wool over their eyes? Was I the only one to notice the irony in the Governor of Washington State standing with our Premier supporting the ban on tankers into Vancouver? Does Premier Horgan not understand that one of the main reasons for the high price of fuel in the lower mainland (projected to hit $1.60/litre next month) is that due to lack of sufficient pipeline capacity the Vancouver refineries are importing petroleum FROM WASHINGTON STATE in US$$. Not only does Washington welcome some 10 tankers a week through Juan de Fuca Strait from Alaska, it then sends its own tankers up into Burrard Inlet. Of course, the Governor doesn’t want BC to have access to cheaper Canadian crude because it would potentially eliminate the need to buy from Washington.

The Governor may be concerned about the environment but not at the expense of bringing tankers down the west coast. His interest in stopping a Canadian pipeline is the same as those Americans who fund Canadian anti-pipeline groups: let the USA reap the benefits of the increased technical ability to mine fossil fuels. While we have been dithering and protesting, the USA has become an exporter of oil and is about to become a big player in the LNG business. And at the same time I don’t see any of the protesters giving up their cell phones, or synthetic clothing made from petroleum products.

Yes, by 2050 perhaps much of the world will have significantly reduced its use of fossil fuels; but if we don’t wake up, our country will have spiralled into bankruptcy long before then, with the assets still in the ground. We will have lost out in the economic world transitioning to new options. We will have run out of money for hospitals, for aboriginal issues, for education, for infra-structure. And then watch foreign interests come in and buy up all the new agricultural lands available due to changes in climate in the north because we have neither the fuel or the funds to develop them ourselves.

So thanks Premier, for not really hearing what your friend is telling you. Keep tilting against the windmills until there is no wind in your sails. Keep the money in the ground; obviously better there than in salaries for all your blue collar workers who work in the oil patch and its related industries that you could levy income taxes against. Yes, there might be an oil spill that will mess things up for a while during clean-up; BUT there may be an earthquake too, and I don’t see you stopping people building high rise towers in Vancouver. And if auto traffic is a sin, why did you take the tolls off the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges, so that even more people are back driving their cars instead of taking public transit into the city, and the rest of us no longer contribute to the bridge debt?

Mr Premier, you remind me of someone who has a fist full of one thousand dollar bills and is told they will soon be taken out of service, that the bank is retiring them and you only have five years to convert them in other currency. Do you make use of those bills? No, you keep holding them because you know that someday they will be worthless and then you won’t have to worry about anyone stealing them. And you hold them and hold them and then one day the banks say “times up” and all you’ll have are sore hands from squeezing the money too hard — the value will be gone and you will have nothing.

Good luck with that thinking (except unfortunately, what you’re doing is actually holding everybody’s thousand dollar bills so that all of us will have nothing)…

g.w.