OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor. This letter is in reference to a press release published in OrilliaMatters on Tuesday. Send your letters to [email protected]
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I join with the “50 Community Champions” in supporting many of the aims and objectives set out by Sustainable Orillia. They are all well thought out, well-intended.
However, I would not support the “noteworthy members of the community”, many of whom I know and respect for their contributions in the past, in their efforts to "shift our financial investments away from fossil fuels towards greener choices that do not put nature further in debt.”
Come right out and say it: “Shift our investments completely out of something that is produced in Canada, by Canadians, so that we are at the mercy of the U.S. and other oil producing countries.”
Canada is a young country with a young and growing economy. Our resource-producing provinces are competing internationally. We need to harvest our resources with many of Sustainable Orillia's objectives in mind, but we don't need to “shift” our financial investments away from our own country.
The Western provinces depend on harvesting our natural resources while we in Ontario are fortunate to have been productive for longer and therefore have diversified our economy. If we want to prosper as a country we shouldn't encourage the “shifting” of investments. That's not the way you build a country.
I know many of the “noteworthies” to be fair-minded people and I would ask them to reflect on that clause. However, if that doesn't cause them to re-think let me try this.
Over the past 40 years, the Western provinces have developed the forest and oil industries. Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes have seen a migration of people to those Western Provinces.
Many of the “noteworthies” have sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, and other friends and relatives who have moved west to work, live, and invest.
Are you going to send them a copy of the Sustainable Orillia statement to read while they wait for a job interview or a meeting with their bank manager?
With the deletion of that initiative, I would support the Sustainable Orillia statement.
Doug Lewis
Orillia
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