Shame on Coderre

Dear Editor,

I just watched, on Jan. 26, Denis Coderre, the mayor of Montreal and apparently the chief bag man in Quebec for the Liberal Party, try to talk his way out of the storm he created by coming out against the Energy East pipeline project.

What a hypocrite he is! This is the same guy that, just last month, signed on to dump billions of litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence seaway, yet goes against a modern pipeline to bring Canadian oil to a Canadian refinery in New Brunswick, and also to a seawater port to ship our product to world markets and therefore world prices, instead of 20 per cent less by having only the U.S. as a customer.

Quebec turned down a saltwater port as part of this system build because of the concern that beluga whales may be affected if some oil ever found its way into the seaway, but I guess they can swim in tons of raw sewage without any ill effect! Thousands of people in the west, and in Ontario and Quebec that produce equipment for the energy industry, have lost or will soon lose their jobs, and people like Coderre continue to throw roadblocks in the way of progress of Canadians.

Many folks feel that if Quebec blocks every attempt to complete this vision that will benefit all Canadians, and not cost taxpayers one cent, yet pay huge benefits to all of us, including the billions in transfer payments to Quebec over the years, then maybe the transfer payments should stop.

Quebec has plenty of resources in the ground, but doesn’t feel the need to exploit them to help their citizens improve their standard of living, but continues to put roadblocks in the way of other provinces getting their product to markets to pay most of the bills.

At the same time, he does not mention the big pipeline to Montreal that carries foreign oil from tankers that is shipped to Maine, then via pipeline to Montreal.

He is only against Alberta oil, not foreign oil, as so many on the left are, yet Canada has the most rigorous environmental standards anywhere!

As I said, a total hypocrite and a disgrace.

Canada deserves much better than most of the people that claim to represent us.

Russ Horner