Buying Alberta

Re: Oil says no thanks to Ottawa “handout,” Dec. 19 The growing disconnect between the federal Liberals and Alberta is again on full display. Ottawa is providing $1.6 billion as a job-training, product-enhancement and market-diversification Band-Aid, when all the oil and gas industry wants or needs is take-away pipeline capacity.

To understand Alberta’s frustration, ask why America’s oil and gas industry is booming and ours isn’t. Since being elected three years ago, Liberal ideology and regulatory inertia have resulted in the demise of two pipeline proposals by government fiat, two more being stymied in the courts, and another being nationalized. All the while, Canada has lost billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue.

How much social licence is needed for Canadians to start providing Alberta with meaningful support? Paul Baumberg, Dead Mans Flats, Alta.

I am following the current financial problems in Alberta relative to the oil industry ... and I am remembering a business trip to Calgary many years ago.

If memory serves — and, at 82, it is often less than accur- ate — in the 1980s, Pierre Trudeau created a political controversy with a national energy policy that greatly irritated Albertans.

When I exited the airport in Calgary, I was surprised to see on the bumpers of taxi cabs, stickers with the words, “Let Those Eastern Bastards Freeze In The Dark!”

I wonder if that same sentiment towards us“Eastern bastards” exists today? Bruce A. Anderson, Peterborough, Ont.

The hypocrisy is staggering. On one hand, our federal Liberal government has legislated rules that have strangled our oil industry. On the other hand, this same government is now offering $1.6 billion to that same industry to help them overcome those same rules.

I have been recently thinking of leaving my adopted province of Newfoundland and Labrador to escape the high tax rates and the mind-bending incompetence of the provincial political class.

I’m now thinking I might have to leave the country. Barry Imhoff, St. John’s, N.L.

JIM WELLS / POSTMEDIA NEWS Oil cars are seen as they pass east of the Inglewood neighbourhood in Calgary. Albertans and other Canadians are becoming increasingly frustrated by the country’s inability to get more of its oil and gas to markets.