A8 • THE SILHOUETTE
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2011
The stink on Skelly
Ethics behind the oil: the foreign petrol story • CONT’D FROM A7
JONATHON FAIRCLOUGH / PRODUCTION EDITOR
Donna Skelly is a ghost when student issues are concerned, as we saw last time. Kacper Niburski
Assistant News Editor
This was supposed to be a news article. It was supposed to be factual, cutting edge stuff. As far as a journalist is allowed to admit, I was bent to join your cause, Donna Skelly. I felt that if I could only tell the story right, then you’d surely have a chance of winning the riding of Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale (AFDW) as the Progressive Conservative candidate. To be quite frank, I truly did want to represent you. I really did. Believe it. But when you failed to come to the AllCandidates debate, when you disregarded the repeated attempts to establish contact, and when you agreed to policies such as the Niagara-GTA highway that will destroy much of the farmland in your riding, I had but one choice. My choice, readers, this is the truth: if it’s smelly, it must be Skelly. As a television broadcaster for 22 years, don’t let her TV personality delude you. Behind that wide smile, those caked-on features and a pair of brown beady eyes is a woman who joined the ballot late April 2011. To do so, though, wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was what most people are like off camera: ugly. The beginning of Donna Skelly’s political career was no different. It was nothing short of a knife fight. Before Donna ran for the AFDW riding, there was Chris Corrigan. A man of valor and bravery, Chris was a retired army colonel and an Associate and Director with a Toronto-based corporation, Forrest & Company. On top of that, he was a frequent lecturer at McMaster University and a supporter of student’s alike. Whether under machine gun fire or over corporate meetings, Chris was a tested, and most importantly, a proven leader. He did what he had to do, and he did it well. Then, we have Donna. No war. No corporate grit. Just makeup, cameras and reading lines someone else wrote for her; a puppet, nothing more. But I get it. I really do. Donna has the glitz and glamour of the television on her side. Chris doesn’t. She has the looks. Chris doesn’t. She is relatable to blue-collar fam-
ilies. Chris isn’t. It’s obvious. Why have a sacrificial lamb when you can have a glamour pony? And like a pony would have, Donna galloped onto the political stage. Soon she became the moneymaker and the rent payer, receiving plenty of funding from various sources. Unlike Chris, she had a chance of winning. That was why she was chosen. She was supposed to be the Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Ronald Reagan of the AFDW riding. In short, her success was almost guaranteed; she was a star. All one had to do was connect the dots of her constellation. But even a star explodes. When it does, its light shines back at us like a reminder of what could have been. Donna is, and was, no different. As voters, we gaze upon Donna – the supposed star – and what we see back is not a source of light, but an empty darkness of the political variety. While she was wrapped in being a local celebrity – and milking that prestige for what it’s worth – we were stuck on Earth left only to stargaze. Up there, she remains, and up there, she has forgotten us she has forgotten the people she promises to represent. I say this for three reasons. The first is that she parachuted into the election in an undemocratic process on the back of a legitimate candidate, without an opportunity for party members to even vote. Then she supported various policies, the most notable the Niagara-GTA highway, which will pave highways into the rural farmland for which the riding is known. Then, most recently and most troubling, she failed to address the youngest of her riding – the students, the generation that will be affected by any policy she chooses. Although she describes herself as “a mother of two, who knows the challenges facing families today,” she is far from them. She can very well discuss the rising tuition as a problem that affects her and her children, but she failed to put her words into action. She did not show up for the debate. She did not let her voice allay the students’ worries and anxieties in an unsure world. There were no words of wisdom, no promises of hope. Instead, an empty chair replaced her. It did all the talking she ever could.
“Know what I really hate? Irritable farmers who keep me from their goats. Now thanks to Ye Olde Silhouette, the entire hovel can appreciate my ire for authority! Throw a message turdling at opinions@thesil.ca to fight the farmer menace with me!” -Goat-eating goblin
the environment is affected as heavily as it is in the case of the oil sands, the impact is not just on the immediate area, but on the country – even the globe – as a whole. Is it ethical to produce runoff so toxic that it killed a flock of birds that landed in an adjacent pond in 2005? How about considering that production of a single barrel of tar sands oil produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil? Or that the toxic emissions from the oil sands are equal to a major oil spill occurring every year? Human rights issues are a problem, and one that must be taken seriously; however they are isolated problems that affect the peoples of the country in question. Pollution from the oil sands degrades the environment of the entire globe. That is undeniably an ethics issue. While the Alberta oil sands produce enough oil to satisfy all of Canada’s consumption needs, the eastern provinces continue to import oil from foreign countries. In fact, around 55 per cent of Canada’s crude oil came via import in 2008 from countries including Saudi Arabia and Venezuela – two countries identified as producers of “conflict oil”. Canada cannot meet its own oil require-
ments, let alone those of the rest of the world. What kind of message does it send to Canadians and to citizens of other countries to say that we stand for “ethical oil” while at the same time importing large quantities of “conflict oil” on a daily basis? Until Canada stops importing “conflict oil” it is in no position to point fingers. It should be obvious that Canada is a morally superior nation to a dictatorship. However, moral superiority does not make a product any less dangerous. The premise of the Ethical Oil campaign resembles My Little Pony pitching cigarettes to children. Sure, the product is harmful, but hey, those ponies have otherwise excellent moral values, and that makes it okay. A nation should not rely on its foreign reputation to sell harmful and possibly dangerous goods. A successful campaign also creates a dangerous precedent. What is to prevent the government from advocating “Ethical Asbestos” or the Ethical Clubbing of Baby Seals campaigns? The Ethical Oil campaign draws attention to serious issues countries should consider concerning where they are getting their oil from; however, that includes taking into account environmental considerations. On the issue of the environment, their message is clear: Ignore the man behind the curtain.