On Dec. 26, you printed a letter by Jennifer Tassone and then printed a "kind of" rebuttal to her letter by Robert Cichocki on Jan. 21.
I say "kind of" because Cichocki leaves far more facts out of his anti-capitalist tirade than most left-wing writers.
From a left-wing point of view, all of our trade agreements are bad, anti-Canadian or anti-worker.
The fact we need more trade agreements to diversify our interests around the world is somehow lost on Cichocki. How these left-wing views can create jobs is beyond me.
He rants on that Canada's government railroaded the Canada-China agreement through without debate. Nothing is mentioned in his diatribe about the fact all parliamentary rules had been followed, including posting the proposed agreement for the required two weeks.
Because the opposition didn't read what was posted nor used any of their scheduled debate time is somehow the government's fault. I don't think so.
Cichocki has arguments about comparing land mass and population. Well, it's a simple fact Canada has a little more than three persons per square kilometre. Norway has 14 people per square kilometre. Canada's land mass ranks second in the world, while Norway ranks 67th. We should not forget the logistical costs of moving every consumed product around the huge land mass of Canada.
I wish Norway well, and if there is something we can learn from them, we should be grateful. They have huge natural resources all close to the hungry European market.
I don't think they had environmentalists picketing out on the North Sea when the drilling rigs were at work. I haven't heard of groups like the Tides Foundation paying First Nations people to undermine North Sea production.
Does Norway ban all oil tankers from its shores? I think not.
Our world is littered with the ashes of utopian socialist experiments. For almost 100 years, we have seen country after country fail because of the views Cichocki expounds.
One cannot pick a tiny country in the North Sea with its unique resources and use it as a utopian template.
Thank you, Ms. Tassone, for a clear outline of Canadian reality.
Laura Livingstone,
Kelowna