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Notley worried about votes, not oil prices

Train car decision shows NDP are lost in the woods: reader
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Dear editor,

Having listened to news yesterday of Rachel Notley’s solution to the oil price differential, I could not believe what I was hearing. For her to suggest that we buy rail cars and locomotives is about the stupidest thing I have heard. I cannot believe that there was much thought done before she made the announcement.

The first thing wrong with this idea is that Alberta cannot afford to buy 1,000 rail cars. Notley does not seem to get it through her head that we can not just keep borrowing to pay for her socialistic brainwaves.

The second thing wrong is that the rail lines are running at full capacity now. There is so much oil being shipped by rail that the farmers are having a hard time to get their grain shipped.

The third thing wrong with buying rail oil tankers is, by the time they arrive it will too late, because many companies will be broke and thousands of jobs will lost. She even said herself that they wouldn’t arrive until 2020, which is at least a year and a half away.

The rail Ccompanies say they are not ordering more oil cars as they cost too much. How much are the rail companies going charge for using the rails and how long would it take to pay for these oil cars is something that the NDP has not even considered.

Rachel Notley said that the 1,000 oil cars would alleviate about 4 per cent of the overstock of oil we have, but that would not be enough to change the differential to a profitable position. According to figures I have seen it would take a 10 per cent reduction in our oil stocks to bring the margins back to where there is a profit. The only way this will happen is by the government stepping in with a control on the amount that can be produced. It has been done twice before and worked both times.

The NDP had a chance to make the federal government and the BC NDP realize how bad we really need to have OUR OIL ( it belongs to the people of Alberta) shipped to tidewater. They could have shut down all shipments of oil to the coast and it would have only taken about two weeks for the BC government to realize how dependent they are on our oil. At the time Rachel was going along with her buddies Trudeau and Horgan to delay the pipeline as long as they could. Rachel Notley and her buddies have got themselves in a real mess because of the stupid decisions that they have made and now are trying to make it look like they care because they need the votes.

The people of Alberta are smart enough, ( at least the ones won’t vote NDP) to realize that Rachel Notley has changed from a person who was against pipelines to one who now is in favor of getting our oil products to market because she needs votes. Everything that the NDP is doing these days is geared to buying votes with borrowed taxpayers money.

Jim Cook

Westerose