But let’s get back to Ms. McKenna. She is a lady with impressive credentials and she has always acted in a self-assured manner. Nobody deserves the slanders and slurs of the ignorant with which she had to handle.
The explanation for her leaving parliament rings hollow. Her family is right there in Ottawa. Does somebody else really need the seat? And what about the outstanding problem left in the in-basket at the environment office?
Nobody has the right to call themselves an environmentalist while leaving the questions unrecognized about the TransMountain pipeline. The place where these questions need to be brokered is the cabinet table.
The cabinet cannot hide from the truth. The only reason that pipeline is being twinned at this time—at a cost of over $12 billion—is to carry more of the most polluting bitumen in the world to the shores of Burrard Inlet at Vancouver.
The plan is to load ocean tankers there with the bitumen from the Alberta tar sands and sail it through the Salish Sea—the waters where the Orca feed.
Just one marine accident with diluted bitumen in the straits would doom the west coast fishing and feeding of marine life in the area for many years. It is of deep concern to environmentalists and realists. Ms. McKenna says she is leaving government because she wants to spend more time with her family. It is to be expected that the whales off Vancouver feel the same about the time they have left for their families.
-30-
Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can now be sent to: