Dear sir,
I am writing in response to Brian (Tipper) Mould’s letter of March 9.
His reasoning seems to be if I drive a car I have to support Enbridge and if I don’t it’s the same as being against the farm that grows our potatoes - a poor analogy at best.
With hard work and a little luck, farms produce year after year, but oil reserves are finite and that makes them more precious than potatoes.
Even a poor analogy is worth exploring, so let’s compare Enbridge with the Kitwanga potato farmer.
First farming: an existence so thin that a second income is usually mandatory. So why do it? The farmer loves the land. All that planting, weeding, staring at the sky waiting for the harvest.
The big payoff? Ask them, with a sincere look, if they make lots of money growing spuds - it’s good for them to laugh.
Enbridge hates the land, especially mountains. The railways grabbed all the best routes long ago and the distance to the coast is so far, so many mountains to climb - both literal and figurative.
Please don’t mention that whole ocean thing, it makes their eyes roll back.
Talk about the payoff to see the twinkle in their eye. Billions to be made selling Alberta crude oil to China and for billions no risk is so great it can’t be taken...with appropriate safeguards, of course...as cheaply as possible.
Once the pipeline is built and operating Enbridge will focus on reducing costs and getting rid of restrictions to make even more money and if you don’t know that, you don’t know potatoes.
Bill Hutson
Kitimat.