Dear Editor,

A disturbing new piece of vocabulary has just infected all of ours. The acronym for it is PAH - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - a group of carcinogenic toxins, such as mercury, black-carbon, and other metals that scientists have recently proven to be in the sediment core samples taken from the Athabaska River which runs through Fort McMurray Alberta.

And we are all complicit. Even up to 90 kilometres downstream, levels have risen from 2.5 to 23 times higher than those prior to 1960 when the Alberta tar sand development began.

Further calculations confirm that, even at current flow levels, they will reach critical-mass proportions in less than seven years, by which time, of course, Mr. Harper and all his Chinese and Calgarian cronies will have long scurried off into the sunset on all their golden parachutes, and it will be impossible to reclaim these damages, no matter how many lawyers we chase them with.

By then we will have been bought out for pennies on the dollar, and will be owned lock, stock, and barrel anyway.

We are talking about capitalists with bottomless pockets - filled with our money.

How stupid do they think we are? How stupid are we? Do you think they care about our aboriginal concerns? Or how many they have to bury each year from suicide or previously non-existent cancers in their reservations?

The secret back room deals violate treaties that go back decades, and the First Nations are now only the first to be double-crossed. Guess who's is next.

We need to stop these pipelines. This is no economic boon; the only good thing in it for B.C. is that we don't live downwind or down river from Alberta, but what about our food, our fish, our corn, our cattle, our chickens, or our conscience?

And if all that isn't enough, the oil industry standard for a successful cleanup is only 15 per cent. The cleanup costs for the recent Enbridge spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is already over $800 million and that is just in a simple little inland river.

What about the other 85 per cent? Imagine an open ocean and more than 200 miles of pristine coastline. Maybe we should ask the shrimp fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico about how they made out.

The Northern Gateway ads are touting many jobs, but they are only temporary; the permanent ones are to be about 35.

Yo, Enbridge! Please, go stick your pipe up your own bush.

Danny A. "Hurricane" Halmo, Langley