I remember a time when Canada had a superb reputation around this diverse globe.  Humanitarian peacekeepers who first came up with the idea of protecting natural places and calling them National Parks because they were for all.  This good has been sullied.  Canada is now regarded with the same disdain as the US - which (in my observations) is thought to be bullying, too rich for its own good and overwhelmingly self centred and self serving.

Is this letter posted here so it can be spread around via email FB and other social networks?

Sure. I went to the source and "shared" on Facebook. CBC has noe done a fuller story.

Click on: 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/01/26/pol-oilsands-campaign.html

It seems to me a pretty shameful strategy of persuasion in a democracy. But there seems to be a lot of apathy about it.

A complex issue.  What we need are more facts (what safety precautions are proposed for the pipelines and shipping; what resources would be on standby for the inevitable  leaks and tanker accidents; who will be financially responsible for those resources; what provisions will be made to ensure people injured by those failures will be promptly and fairly compensated unlike what is still going on with compensation for the Exxon Valdez; what are the predictable costs and benefits to everyone affected by the construction and use of the pipeline; etc.), and less rhetoric on both sides.  | read in the Calgary Herald this week that the governments of Alberta and Canada have not figured out yet who will be paying for the announced improvements in monitoring of the effects of the oilsands.

The current federal govt sees everyone with opposing points of views to be enemies to be destroyed.