Question:
You're misunderstanding the NDP. They would like the mining industry to
provide heaps of jobs, while paying union wages and high royalties and
living up to environmental standards. The industry thinks that's
unrealistic. The two can't agree on a compromise somewhere in between
their positions, and so the mining industry shuts down.
Answer:
That's bullshit and you should know it. The NDPers hate miners, or
anyone, for that matter, that makes that "evil"profit from resources.
(one could expand that to say anyone that makes a profit)
Barrett decimated the mining industry in the seventies and Harcourt's
first initiative was to close mining in the North.
Well, of course both are true. We aren't growing them like we used to
because the forest industry doesn't want to wait 500 years for the next
harvest on a given tree plantation. And we aren't cutting them down like
we used to because there are fewer old-growth forests left that the
industry hasn't had to put 70 years of tending into.
Then why, oh why, does the forest industry want to keep cutting the most
accessible old-growth trees, John? Why didn't the industry, the first
time an environmentalist or an aboriginal claim came along, just step
aside and say sure, we'll stop cutting these big old trees right now,
because our plantations are growing all we need?
Clever of you, by the way, to snip and not respond to the lion's share
of my post, which maintained that there are many, more important and
more permanent factors than the NDP that have slowed down the forest
industry in the last 30 years. Can I take it you're conceding all those
points?
