Dear Mr. Trudeau:
you asked for constructive discussion with Canadians. Here is my first try.
ON SYRIAN REFUGEES . The majority of Canadians as well as many prominent politicians and experts outside Canada agreed with the humanitarian goal of your decision, but opposed the rush : 25.000 Syrian refugees in Canada by the end of the year. The project of this magnitude would require some three to six months to do the job in a responsible and safe way and not impose the unnecessary hardship on the new immigrants, Canadian immigration officials and the whole new infrastructure required. You finally accepted this reality. It still may be a tough task to transfer 25.000 immigrants in the middle of winter, and depressing for people who have never experienced winter before. Like us moving to Baffin Island right now.
I appreciate your enthusiasm and energy. But your comparing the Irish immigrants from the past to the newcomers from the culture often hostile towards our Western values is a bit naive. In a civil war there are criminals on both sides. Not all refugees are just victims of ISIS. I still do believe that many of the potential immigrants to Canada are innocent victims, willing to adjust and start a new life in Canada. But screening should still be as properly done as possible. Among other information, your screening officers should explain very clearly to all potential immigrants that Canada is a free country for both men and women, that women are as free to date as men are, that we do not tolerate the outdated medieval concept of "honour". That the freedom of religion is guaranteed, but the law is the same for all citizens of Canada.
Your latest decision to exclude single men contradicts your principle of gender equality. Screening should be equal for all adults. After all, one of the most disgusting murders in the Canadian history was committed by the middle class Shafia family, who brutally drowned four of their own women.
We have to welcome our future citizens with warmth and encouragement, and try to show them that our multicultural society is among the best in the world, worth accepting it, without losing the best of their ethnic identity.
ON CANADIAN MILITARY TRAINING SUPPORT
Credible sources claim that Assad supporters have killed more civilians than ISIS, but they at least do not commit despicable crimes abroad. Russia has bombed US supported rebels. Saudi Arabia and Iran are on the opposite sides of this religious war. Turkey shot down a Russian plane since the two countries support the opposite sides in northern Syria. Kurds are fighting ISIS but are also in permanent conflict with our NATO ally Turkey. In this complicated, dangerous and ever changing situation of this civil war, can you have at all a clear objective with your military training support? In any case, if ISIS is to be defeated, some strange alliance will be required.
ON GLOBAL WARMING AND GREEN POWER.
I appreciate your initiative to change the image of Canada regarding our contribution to reduction of greenhouse gasses. Good luck in Paris. But remember that it is easy to promise and difficult to deliver when the cost of cleaner air becomes known.
I have to warn you not to take seriously the propaganda about wind and solar power as a viable solution to our energy and greenhouse gasses production problem. My brief rationale:
Last winter, I monitored the performance of wind turbines located in the windy Bruce Peninsula. There were weeks after weeks with average temperatures at 15 below that not a single turbine even moved. And the sun was not shining most of the winter. No green energy when we needed it most. So we still need the nuclear power in Ontario to cover ALL our electricity needs.
As a professional electrical power engineer with 40 years experience in generation, transmission and nuclear power plants , I published a year ago a brief report on wind power, based on simple and realistic calculations. I predicted the capacity factor of wind turbines at 25%, which is already unacceptable in the real world. After carefully reading the performance reports from Germany and The Netherlands, I realized that I was too optimistic. The actual picture is far grimmer. The capacity factor of all German wind turbines in 2014 was 14.8%.(Germany leads the world in wind power nominal capacity, 39.000 MW) The German turbines operated at 50 to 70 % only 424 hours per year.( The year has 8760 hours). The rest of the year they were providing annoying little short lasting contributions to the grid which only caused instability and blackouts. The blackouts were felt even in the Czech republic and Poland. All this mega investment for less than nothing. Germany now has to hurry to build dirty lignite fired power plants if they really want to get rid of nuclear reactors. The outlook for 2015 is even grimmer. Serious operational problems with wind turbines farms have been experienced.
In comparison, the capacity factor of most nuclear power plants is around 90% and does not depend on weather.
The capacity factor in the motherland of wind power, The Netherlands, was 18.6%, covering a grand total of 3.37 % of their power demand . Another big waste of money, and a lot of frustration.
The wind turbines in Ontario have not contributed in any meaningful way to the total energy demand. Just a waste of billions of dollars. PLEASE DO NOT WASTE THE FEDERAL DOLLARS THE SAME WAY.
I would like to spend just a few hours per phone in front of a computer with an engineer on your staff. We could save billions of dollars in those few hours! I have translated the German report, but the short summary is already available under"German wind turbine performance 2014" on the web, by a German writer. Scary total picture.
I am by far not alone with this negative assessment. Bill Gates, for example, considers investing into wind and solar a complete waste which will never contribute to the energy solution. He goes as far to calling costs to provide the total energy by wind and solar "beyond astronomical". He suggests spending money on the research instead. My idea: spend the money for the research on much cleaner LFTR or similar THORIUM REACTORS - a doable possibility, while fusion is probably not. Thorium as a fuel is abundant.
ON MARIJUANA: You will just add another source of supply. The black market will still continue. I am against any recreational smoking, but not against medicinal use of marijuana.
ON INEQUALITY: I strongly agree with your taking the first step by taxing the wealthy more. We have a long way to go. Countries with about the same GDP per capita as Canada but with more equitable distribution of wealth can afford, among other, a free post secondary education – like Germany, Austria, or Denmark. Hopefully more on this topic in my next letter.
ON INVESTMENT INTO INFRASTRUCTURE:
Learn from Bob Rae "experience" as Ontario premier and listen to the top brains in this field. I have heard only about the mega projects in Montreal and Toronto. How about Grey and Bruce?
Best Regards
Maks Zupan ,
Owen Sound
