Editor’s Notes

Friday, May 9, 2008

Literary Editor Mike Heenan takes time to smell the tulips

Summer season in Ottawa starts with the Tulip Festival, now in full flower. By the thousands, tulips welcome visitors by the thousands who come to take pleasure in the bright colourful display.

Poet Mike Heenan, Literary Editor of True North Perspective, takes pen in hand to share his good feelings in poetic prose about our federal capital city. You’ll find him below in Random Acts of Poetry.

You’ll find me back in this corner next week.

Take it easy but take it.

Looking forward.

Carl Dow
Editor and Publisher
True North Perspective
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Please find below in my Editor’s Notes of Monday, November 12. 2007, a prediction that the upward price spurts would seriously raise the platform of public gouging by Big Oil and their allies on Wall Street, and in government. My argument for control of prices still stands.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Editor’s Notes

Canada has a choice: move now to secure oil benefits
or allow big oil to get it all and leave us looking like idiots

The $100-barrel of oil is not a spike. It represents a general rise in the price of oil. It’s causing a global shift in economic and political power. Canada has the world’s second or third largest reserve of oil, depending on who’s counting, and how. Ottawa must fulfill its mandate to govern on behalf of all Canadians by preventing Big Oil from treating our country like the global proverbial village idiot.

Public control of a natural resource is not a wild-eyed socialist fantasy. Saudi Arabia, a conservative theocracy, nationalized its oil industry. Circa 1920 a Conservative government established Ontario Hydro to rationalize the development and distribution of electric power. Alberta has sensibly moved to increase its cut of the take. Next door in Alaska, the state in September raised the annual oil dividend paid to every man, woman and child living there for a year to $1,654, an increase of $547 from last year.

The resource is finite. Let’s hope that when it’s gone, Canada won’t be standing there with a bemused slap-head grin watching money-bloated Big Oil waddle off to the bank. It’s time Ottawa took a long view of the situation and came to the obvious conclusion.

We offer an excellent up-dater on the subject by The Washington Post. Also reprinted is my thesis on True North No Gas Fridays. And then for fun we have an imagined conversation between Vladmir Putin and George W. Bush who are required to tell the truth.

Because of logistical problems True North will publish skeleton issues today and Wednesday. Followed by a muscle-and-bone edition on Friday.

Looking forward

Carl Dow
Editor and Publisher
True North Perspective
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