Editor:
For trying to defend the life-giving environment, my prime minister has labelled me a threat to national security. Stephen Harper has ground any pretence of democratic government under his heel as he and his menacing ministers attack all those who oppose the plan to poison B.C. with tar sands pipelines and massive oil tankers.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May sums up the situation well. “Never before in Canadian history has a governing party chosen to vilify its citizens for the offence of commitment to our environment,” she said recently. “The prime minister has made it clear he regards the determination of Canadians to oppose oil tankers on the B.C. coast and piping bitumen crude out to the U.S. for China as anti-Canadian activity.”
Harper henchmen are even demonizing charities that receive some support from U.S. counterparts in opposing the inevitable pollution of Enbridge’s huge pipeline scheme. While Canadians often contribute to combatting ecological problems in other parts of the world, our own government condemns us for accepting some help from other countries.
“The tactics of the Harper Conservatives are chilling,” writes May. “They combine suppression of dissent with conflating the ‘public interest’ with the profits of foreign oil companies. We need to speak out clearly. The national interest requires addressing the climate crisis, establishing energy security and diversifying energy sources.”
In what is supposed to be a democracy, is it justifiable for a federal government to insult, abuse and threaten those who do not blindly follow that government’s Big Oil agenda? Armed with a majority of party hacks in Parliament, Harper is acting more like a Dark Ages king than a politician who has sworn to represent the people who pay his salary.
Tony Eberts, New Westminster