Letters, May 7

Cost of scrapping tax

Re: End the industrial carbon tax (Think Tank, May 6)

With regards to opinion piece by Gage Haubrich, Prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation: I’ve done online research on the implementation of carbon taxes by countries worldwide. This research shows that European countries are environmentally advanced compared to North America.

It also shows that they will not buy as many goods from countries who do not implement some form of carbon taxes to protect the environment. Mr. Haubrich suggests Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to remove the industrial carbon tax. My impression is that although removing this tax may lower costs for businesses, and also somewhat for consumers, doing so may affect Canadian trade with the European countries that implement these taxes.

Removing carbon taxes will also negatively affect environmental protection (increasing pollution, flooding, wildfires and other events). Do we want this?

Donna Eastoe

Winnipeg

Mr. Haubrich omits any mention whatsoever of the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which provides for tariffs on goods from countries that fail to apply a carbon pricing mechanism.

So, his advice to pressure Manitoba to “demand an end to the industrial carbon tax” has the effect of making Canada more dependent on the U.S. market.

Norman Rosenbaum

Winnipeg

World needs more food

Re: “Homes and food production” (Letters, May 6)

Mr. Hammond states “Perhaps higher buildings may be better for real estate in cities. Leave the land for food production” and “Citizens need to plan for a longer range.”

I agree with most of this, except I would change to “Leave the land for rewilding.” The global population is projected to be 10 billion people by 2050. In order for everyone to be properly nourished, the current food production system is unsustainable. We need to think more radically and unconventionally and embrace innovation, technology and science.

We need to produce much more of our food in the lab, for example, using precision fermentation, which is used today to produce insulin. Europe accepts organic, but has banned genetically modified crops and precision fermentation. We need to lift bans on solutions based on evidence and science and instead move forward with them.

Todd De Ryck

Winnipeg

Problems with separation

Re: Not the time for brinkmanship (Editorial, May 5)

Maybe the question to separate should be the story of two Albertas. One without oil revenue and the other with.

As it stands Alberta has roughly 140 years’ worth of oil reserves. So for the sake of the question of an Alberta without oil revenues, let’s pretend cold fusion energy was achieved tomorrow. That would give Alberta maybe 20 years for the economics of scale of cold fusion can reach a level to impact on their economy.

That’s not to say there won’t still be a need for oil. Petroleum products are vast. If it’s plastic, it’s come out of the ground at least in part. However, the heavy crude used in the production of transportation fuel is not ideal for plastics. Crude oil is better suited for those purposes. But regardless, oil has to be, in today’s dollars, at least $100 a barrel to make it worth the cost of pulling it out of the oil sands and processing and shipping.

If the need for oil drops, so will the price. If there is cheap clean energy, the price of processing it should drop as well but it still has to be worth the cost of getting it to market. In any scenario the corporations that actually own the oil sands, not Alberta, will most likely cut back or idle production because it just isn’t worth it, and Alberta’s economy will move in lockstep with those production cuts.

So back to an Alberta with oil revenue. Would Alberta still want to stand alone? Because if so then Alberta has to use that oil revenue to pay for everything the federal government currently does. Meaning their own rural policing because there wouldn’t be an RCMP. Managing their own social safety nets like EI when their primary industry is boom or bust. Full freight on any natural disasters like wildfires or floods or blizzards which are all forecast to intensify in the years to come. And the list goes on all while asking do the dollars Alberta generates for transfer payments exceed the costs they will now be responsible for? Mind you, the way they do math on “what they are owed” for their cut of CPP I wouldn’t trust any numbers they come up with to sell separation to the masses.

However the questions are worded on a ballot to stay or go, it better be an honest question about the very real outcomes of the decision people are making. You don’t get to take your ball and go home.

You get to keep what is really yours and the rest leaves your control. This includes the lands that were recognized, before Alberta was even a province (formed in 1905), for the peoples that were there long before the oil pumps were.

Brian Spencler

Winnipeg

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and all Albertans who support her separation threat tactics should think through long and hard at what they are proposing.

Do they think they can form an island nation cutting off British Columbia from the rest of Canada with regimented border crossing patrols?

Why do they think that they should have special concessions simply because they are an oil-rich province?

Yes they provide Canada (my country) with huge fiscal benefits for the country as a whole, but other provinces also provide Canada with many other assets, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. The world is changing and there will come a day (I hope) when polluting fossil fuels will become a thing of the past. What will they do then?

No one is an island and we are and should be working together to create a better world, not squabbling about who is more deserving of a bigger slice of the pie.

There is enough of that just south of the border.

Alice French

Winnipeg

A more varied curriculum

Re: The Holocaust 80 years later — teaching its history (Think Tank, May 5)

I agree with Allan Levine’s call to fill gaps in our public education curricula on the horrors of the Holocaust. The public myopia, denial, and antisemitism following the Second World War to the present do need to be confronted and corrected.

At the same time, I wish Levine could have broadened the call to address education about genocides in general, along with the extreme nationalisms that give rise to them. The Armenian, Rwandan, and Rohingyan genocides come to mind; and increasingly, human rights groups are including the destruction of Gaza in the list.

Each is unique in scale and circumstance, of course, but to isolate the Holocaust to the exclusion of other more recent genocides not only obscures the others, it also suggests a myopic kind of exceptionalism which is problematic in itself.

The mantra of “never again” should apply to any destruction of innocent people groups.

Byron Rempel-Burkholder

Winnipeg