Green Party policies naive, harmful to Sudbury

Re: ‘May: Ring of Fire bungling jeopardizes Green prosperity for North,’ May 18.
The Green Party has already been harmful to Sudbury and, based on Mr. May’s utopian column, would cause further harm to Sudbury, Crown sovereignty, the Canadian economy and even to its prize policy, saving the environment.
He writes that “Northerners were excited” about Noront Resources’ decision to locate its ferrochrome smelter in the Sault. No, sir. Residents of the Sault were excited. Residents of Sudbury were dismayed, largely because Mr. May’s Green Party successfully campaigned against it being located here.
Mr. May says that the Ring of Fire is located on “traditional territory” of First Nations, rather than saying it is on Crown land. From this, he makes the false legal statement that the First Nations there must give “free, prior and informed” consent, based on a UN statement that is not the law of Canada.
The thinking behind this, which the Liberal and NDP parties support, as well, is that those First Nations have a de facto veto on all aspects of the Ring of Fire project. It was this Crown sovereignty-destructive and jobs- and economy-killing thinking, as well as excessive demands from First Nations, including threats of illegal activity, that caused Cliff Natural Resources to have to abandon its Ring of Fire hopes (after having announced its smelter would be in Sudbury), and sell out to Noront Resources for pennies on the dollar, losing about $500 million in the process.
That Mr. May, in light of all this, still supports this UN statement, and still elevates First Nations to “separate nation” status, still with veto-like powers, shows that the Green Party (and the Liberals and NDP) are incapable of learning from experience and thus cannot be trusted to govern.
Finally, the desirable transition to a non-carbon based economy will take billions of dollars in new private and government investments. It can’t happen overnight, as Mr. May suggests. These new government dollars can only come from the taxes paid on new undertakings like the Ring of Fire and from the jobs created by them. No new projects equals no new government tax dollars equals the longer-lasting carbon-based economy. Thus, the Green Party’s own naïve, utopian job- and investment-killing policies, which would only lead to another Cliffs Natural Resources fiasco, will assuredly frustrate the accomplishment of their prime policy goal of saving the environment.

Peter Best
Sudbury

https://www.thesudburystar.com/news/local-news/sudbury-letters-green-party-harmful-doctors-right-to-choose