‘No fracking way’
Your article Quebec Moves to Develop Natural Gas Industry (front page, Aug. 30) should serve as a wake-up call.
The use of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to break up underground geological formations and release trapped natural gas is proving to be an extremely controversial practice south of the border. Families there who find that their drinking water is now flammable because of the gas present in the water supply are justifiably outraged. Indeed, widespread claims of contaminated ground water have prompted the New York State Senate to halt such gas-extraction plans until much more is known about fracking.
Clearly, before much more independent research is done to analyze the safety of such methods of hydrocarbon extraction, the only sane reply to gas companies wishing to push ahead is “no fracking way!”
Tony Winson, Guelph, Ont.
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One can only hope Quebec can protect its groundwater resources from the contamination revealed by Joel Fox’s documentary, Gasland. Perhaps it portrays only worst-case scenarios, but the nightmare of contaminated aquifers, kitchen faucets that provide a fine blend of contaminants as well as gas that can be ignited, volatile organic air contamination, and an industrialized landscape that fragments habitat, is recommended viewing for anyone interested in protecting their local water supply.
Al Colodey, Vancouver
Pride and payment
The $130-million AbitibiBowater NAFTA settlement has little if anything to do with trade (Avoiding Getting Stuck With The Bill – editorial, Aug. 30). The almost Canadian pulp and paper giant made a corporate decision to pack up and leave Newfoundland. So the government of Danny Williams made the popular decision to take back water and timber rights lent to the company to keep people working.
This was a natural resource question that Newfoundland was within its rights to handle. Ottawa forced trade into the picture when it signed NAFTA, which lets companies such as AbitibiBowater take costly expropriation claims directly to unelected international trade panels.
Rather than look for ways to make the provinces pay for these settlements, we should remove or rewrite expropriation rules in NAFTA. We would save money and grief by forcing investment disputes back into competent Canadian courts.
Stuart Trew, trade campaigner, Council of Canadians
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Premier Danny Williams has effectively “stolen” $130-million from the rest of Canada and has the brass to call the AbitibiBowater expropriation “one of the actions that I’m the most proud of” (Avoiding Getting Stuck With The Bill – editorial, Aug. 30). Compare this to our PM. The frigid Arctic appears to have shrivelled Mr. Harper’s nerve, his rhetoric of fiscal responsibility and law and order having given way to vote buying.
And please, drop the premise that this is a new situation – theft is theft, no matter how ingenious. Ottawa should hang on to the $130-million and let Newfoundland sue us for it.
Peter Pinch, Toronto
An unemployed President
Brian Milner (Why We Should Avoid Extreme Policy Decisions In Uncertain Times – Report on Business, Aug. 30) presents an interesting debate between two leading American economists. Paul Krugman wants interest rates kept low, whereas and Raghuram Rajan wants them raised gradually.
The difference in opinion is not merely academic, but cultural. Mr. Rajan is rooted in the academic culture in which an academic usually resides in an isolated intellectual universe and is seldom voted out of the job for offering the wrong advice. Mr. Rajan advocates raising interest rates without waiting first for unemployment to decline.
Mr. Krugman, on the other hand, is not just an economist, but a popular columnist and avid blogger. He is also a political animal and realizes that in an interdependent society, interest rates would impact unemployment, which would eventually determine electoral outcomes. Raising rates, even gradually, is likely to force more out of work, which could lead to the President and other Democratic legislators losing their jobs in the forthcoming elections.
Murtaza Haider, Toronto
