Ethical Oil over the Middle East? Anyhow, while our wanderlust prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was hunkered down in Ottawa Sunday with Alberta’s NDP Premier Rachel Notley and her not-so-friendly NDP counterpart in British Columbia, John Horgan, to find a way to get oilsands bitumen to tidewater on the west coast via Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the dirtiest and priciest oil in the world continues to arrive at Canada’s East Coast.
Those Irving Oil refineries have no other choice, of course, if they expect to keep up with a demand for which there is no alternative.
If folks want to fire up their half-tonnes or even their hybrids, haul their goods to market, get food into grocery stores, heat their homes in places where natural gas is not available and global warming has not yet turned Tuktoyaktuk into the tropics, as well as get their kids to hockey practice, et cetera, et cetera, green energy is not going to do it.
Gasoline and diesel fuel will do all those aforementioned tasks, and they will be doing this for decades to come.
We are not even close yet to an alternative to fossil fuels.
We are dependent on oil.
Years ago, a man rarely mentioned anymore in mainstream media (Ezra Levant), got a lot of mileage out of pitching the thought of so-called “ethical oil” when he had a show on the now-defunct Sun News television.
“Ethical oil” is described as not coming from countries where human rights are trampled, where terrorism is sponsored, where democracy doesn’t exist, where women are chattels, where gays are persecuted and murdered, and where executions without trials are public entertainment.
So, based on all the above, I would rather have the “ethical oil” of much-cheaper oilsands bitumen being refined to fire up my aging Jeep than the expensive crude that comes via ocean tankers from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and whatever other hellish source it comes from.
I would rather see my gas money going to support the rest of my fellow Canadian taxpayers than feed the coffers of terrorist and butchers like ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram — (name your terror group.)
And then there is this.
If TransCanada had not been thwarted at every turn by the Trudeau Liberals, leaving it to give up on the Energy East pipeline, the chance of another Lac Megantic would diminish to the point of non-existence.
Unlike rail cars, pipelines do not move and do not blow up.
To the 47 who perished in Lac Megantic in 2013 when their small Quebec town became an inferno after a runaway fuel train derailed and exploded, it would have made a world of difference.
Do not dismiss the final cries they made.
Politicians need to stop putting the personal politics of self-servitude first, and finally do what is right for our nation’s economy and its future financial security.
The turning point is now.
markbonokoski@gmail.com