Voice of the People, Feb. 11

February 11, 2013
  • Praising Canada
Praising Canada (Jennifer M. Kohnke)

Praising Canada

The Chicago Tribune's recent Feb. 4 editorial on Canada, "Canada cool," makes several interesting points of comparison to the U.S., such as that Canada's banks are better regulated and thereby more stable, and praise for Canada's single-payer health care system.

(I was surprised that the Tribune was calling for Canadian-type health care.)

The editorial also mentions Canada's extraction of oil from the Alberta tar sands, thanks to improved drilling technology, and compares the production to that of Saudi Arabia.

This is comparing apples to oranges on several different levels.

First, much of the tar-sand formations are strip-mined, not drilled, and this results in a devastated landscape, as strip-mining usually does.

Just look at photos of the mining sites.

Second, the material produced is bitumen, not oil.

Bitumen is a thick, viscous material, not a liquid hydrocarbon like what comes from a Saudi oil well.

Liquid fuel has to be made from bitumen by a process that requires enormous amounts of water and heat to refine it into a material that can be transported in a pipeline.

About 90 percent of the fresh water used in the process ends up in tailing ponds, some of which are as large as 20 square miles.

This water is highly toxic.

Third, one might well wonder why a pipeline to carry the bitumen isn't constructed from Alberta to a port on the coast of British Columbia.

The answer can be found if you read between the lines of the Tribune's editorial: Many Canadians have sense enough not to do it because they recognize the seriousness of the risks and the consequences.

Finally, the opposition to the XL pipeline is not "pandering to environmental lobbyists"; rather, it is pandering to the good sense of the American people.

This pipeline company has a poor record for leaks: In its first year of operation, Keystone had 12 oil spills.

Enbridge, another Canadian pipeline company, spilled over 800,000 gallons of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

This was not satisfactorily cleaned up.

The material to be pumped through the pipeline to Texas will be under higher pressure, and is more corrosive and more toxic than oil.

All we need is a spill of this poisonous stuff into Lake Michigan, and the citizens of northern Illinois will value water much more that tar sands oil.

I will gladly take the Tim Horton doughnuts, the lower gun crime rate and the health system however.

Kent Wilson, Glenview

Climate change

It is ironic that your editorial extolling Canadian governmental policies mentions both our neighbor's production of tar sands oil and the fact that half of the Chicago Blackhawks hail from Canada. I, too, love the game of hockey, having played it as a child on outdoor Park District rinks in the 1960s and early '70s in Elmwood Park and on the Northwest Side of Chicago yearly from Christmas to Lincoln's birthday, with only an occasional warm spell to interrupt the season.

That is no longer possible today as our climate continues to warm through our ever-increasing use of fossil fuels. The only hockey played these days in the Chicago area is on rinks with refrigeration systems.

I am not the "environmental lobbyist" who objected to the Keystone Project. I am one of the concerned citizens who knows that no politician can change the laws of nature, which are simply chemistry, physics and biology. It baffles me that we endanger the future of our species because we will not change our energy infrastructure. We can pretend that addressing climate change can be deferred. We would be wrong.

Something needs to be done before Canada's favorite winter sport is golf. To quote you: "Can't happen soon enough."

Michael McInerney, Chicago

The Canadian example

The Chicago Tribune's paean to Canada as "a rising star among nations" is accompanied by a picture of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper that goes a long way toward accounting for our "boring, eager-to-please" neighbor's relative success.

In the photo Harper stands behind a lectern that summarizes his "action plan" for the country in three words — "Jobs. Growth. Prosperity."

Would that we, too, had concentrated our efforts on jobs, growth and prosperity, instead of jamming through a Rube Goldberg-constructed health care plan that will further disrupt the economy; concocting phony wars on women and gays; teasing Hispanics with the hope of immigration reform while doing nothing about it; using the elastic, vague concept of "fairness" to force wealth redistribution; building coalitions by spreading vast sums of borrowed money around to favored special-interest groups; and demonizing opponents.

Maybe the past four years would not have been as exciting, but they certainly would have been more productive.

Bob Foys, Chicago