The Province

Euthanasia would be better than life in an aquarium

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The Vancouver Aquarium should take a lesson from the Wildlife Rescue Associatio­n of B.C., situated in Burnaby.

As the aquarium should do with cetaceans, the associatio­n’s mandate is the recovery, rehabilita­tion and release of orphaned or injured wildlife. Creatures that are untreatabl­e or unreleasab­le are humanely euthanized because humans do not have the ability to provide a proper long-term home.

If I were a stranded or wounded marine mammal, I’d rather be euthanized or left to die a natural death than live the rest of my days in a thimble-sized pool for the money-making amusement of gawking humans.

Liz Stonard, Port Alberni

More reservoirs needed

We live in a rainforest, but we’re going to have water restrictio­ns for five months? The rest of the world must be laughing at us.

Why not look to the future with global warming and thousands more people moving into the region and do something now. Expand or build new reservoirs, build a desalinati­on plant, or at least get a conversati­on going on saving all the water that is pouring into the oceans and rivers right now.

Carol Beatch, Burnaby

Didn’t check drugs?

So, during the study of drugs containing fentanyl at Vancouver’s Insite safe-injection site, only five of the 600 daily visitors accepted the offer of getting their drugs checked for this deadly substance? I think that says more than the results.

Lance Frohlick, Richmond

Enough Canucks, already

If I wanted to read, “All Canucks, all the time,” I would go to the Canucks’ website. Is sports writer Jason Botchford not capable of writing about anything else — another sport, maybe?

I find it difficult to believe that readers welcome the mind-numbing, daily barrage of informatio­n about a team whose season ended on April 9.

Andy Gilbert, Vernon

Trudeau risking majority

On May 12, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced Bill C-78 to ban oil tankers off B.C.’s north coast. Naturally, there is to be no East Coast ban. The bill would eliminate the Prince Rupert area — by far the safest location for a tanker port on the West Coast — as the terminus for a highly efficient, environmen­tally responsibl­e energy corridor, which has local and First Nations support, to transport oil, natural gas and electricit­y through northern Alberta and B.C.

Yet Trudeau approved the widely opposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion that will increase oil tanker numbers in Burrard Inlet and along the south coast, which a B.C. NDP-Green coalition and Vancouver and Burnaby will work to delay or kill. The Energy East pipeline to the East Coast will never get approved because Trudeau knows opposition in Quebec would cost him his slim, five-seat majority.

That leaves Alberta with no new markets and just one market for oil, the U.S., which is striving, successful­ly, to become self-sufficient in oil, and leaves Eastern Canada to import premium-priced crude. With Bill C-78, the prime minister can kiss goodbye four Liberal seats in Alberta and at least one in B.C., as well as several in the Atlantic provinces. The Liberals will lose their fiveseat parliament­ary majority. Good riddance!

Mike Priaro, Calgary

 ?? JASON PAYNE/ PNG ?? The debate over marine mammals in aquariums rages on.
JASON PAYNE/ PNG The debate over marine mammals in aquariums rages on.

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