Reopening old wounds

Pierre Trudeau’s Canada ended at the Ontario- Manitoba border. Like father, like son. R. H. Addington, London, Ont. Re: Grits reignite Western alienation. Kelly McParland, Oct. 7

Shame on Kelly McParland, and other media pundits, who are doing their best to, once again, divide Canadians along east/west lines!

Yes, the energy companies are based in Western Canada and for better or worse ( mainly worse in my opinion) our current government remains tilted to the East.

However, beyond physical locations, it is a columnist’s imagination that our population is similarly split. Even as a last century “Eastern Bastard” ( and I remain in one — an Easterner anyway) I certainly support pipeline development.

Also, I am totally fed up with endless handouts of tax money to Bombardier. More importantly, there are millions of us in the East who feel the same way, just as there are millions of left leaning voters in the West. Fergus W. Gamble, Stouffville, Ont.

Kelly McParland is right to assert that the Trudeau government’s approach to energy policy is stoking Western alienation, as did the wrong- headed policies of his father’s government in the early 1980s.

As a British Columbian working in the Ottawa political scene during that earlier time, I was struck by not only the ignorance but, worse, the outright indifference many Eastern- based MPs and unelected policymakers demonstrated to the legitimate concerns and reasonable expectations of Albertans and others in the West.

The difference is that at this time the Clarity Act exists and a mechanism for separation has been approved by t he Supreme Court. With their ill- considered approach and focus on Eastern voters, Trudeau and his colleagues are putting the future of our country at risk. David Marley, West Vancouver