NATIONAL POST, ThurSdAy, JuLy 31, 2014 nationalpost.com A11

dAVId BuIMOVITCh / AFP / GeTTy IMAGeS

A missile is launched by an Iron Dome battery in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on July 18.

Re: The Path Toward Peace In The Mideast, Marc Côté, July 30.Marc Côté asks, “what if Israel didn’t respond to the missiles launched by hamas?” his answer: “At some point, hamas would run out of bombs, or come late to the realization that an Israeli re-taliation wasn’t forthcoming. The attacks would stop.”

It appears as though Mr. Côté thinks he is watching a cowboy movie, where the gunfight lasts until everyone’s gun clicks empty and they all live happily ever after.Uri Samson, Toronto.

It is wonderful that Marc Côté has such a hopeful view of the world, and I share his wish for peace in the Middle east. But his understanding of the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles and the sequence of events preceding the Marshall Plan are flawed.

While it is true war reparations placed an unsupportable burden on Germany, the treaty’s main flaw was that it allowed the Nazis to claim that the country had been robbed, rather than defeated on the battlefield. As for the Marshall Plan, it was preceded by the unconditional sur-render of both Germany and Japan — and it took a couple nuclear bombs to achieve that surrender.

In the Middle east, peace will come when the majority of Arabs accept Israel’s right to exist. until then, we should hold the optimism.Hazen McDonald, Mississauga, Ont.

Is Marc Côté really saying that if the Jews let their enemies hit them until their arms get tired, that Israel will eventually win? really?Sam Leinwand, Markham, Ont.

Marc Côté suggests that Israel stop re-sponding to hamas attacks, in order to stop the “cycle of violence.” This brings to mind the advice that Mahatma Gandhi gave Britain in 1940, when that country was at war with the Nazis.

“I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. you will invite herr hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your pos-sessions.… If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”Diane Weber Bederman, Caledon, Ont.

According to Marc Côté, Israel should just stand pat and let its Iron dome mis-sile defence system shoot down hamas’ missiles, because “at some point, hamas would run out of bombs.”

But what if Israel runs out of Iron dome missiles first. Then what? More-over, some hamas missiles do get through

the Iron dome and all of them — regard-less of whether they hit their target — ter-rorize Israeli civilians on a daily basis. Most importantly, what happens when hamas gets its hands on missiles that can defeat the Iron dome?

Mr. Côté is wrong. The time to defeat hamas is now, not later.Keith Bell, Ottawa.

Marc Côté’s point seems to be that Israel’s propensity to retaliate against Palestin-ian attacks cannot resolve matters (wit-ness the last 10 years or so), but that if the country stopped responding to hamas’ rockets and halted the development of new settlements, that somehow peace would blossom. Mr. Côté backs up his as-sertion by comparing the failure of the “retribution” approach taken at the end of the First World War, to the success of the Marshall Plan used after the Second World War.

however, this comparison fails on multiple levels. The Allied victory at the end of the Second World War was not the result of restraint. It was due to an overwhelming defeat of the Axis power. This involved extraordinary destruction, horrific civilian casualties, the complete elimination of the enemy’s leadership and the occupation of Germany and Japan for years to come.

If Israel stopped retaliating, hamas would lose some of the sympathy it has been getting from other countries, but to what end? The only way to end this con-flict is for the Palestinians to institute a government that’s determined to turn Gaza into a viable entity, while renoun-cing violence against Israel.Ron Hoffman, Toronto.

I invite Marc Côté and other armchair critics of Israel’s tactics to send their chil-dren to summer camp in Israel this Au-gust, just until “hamas would run out of bombs … or the attacks would stop.” I’ll pay the fees.Ron Freedman, Toronto.

Marc Côté is on to something when he says that “retribution” doesn’t work and that what the Mideast needs is a Marshall Plan. I agree completely.

One minor detail missing from this suggestion is that both Germany and Japan surrendered unconditionally. So all we need is for hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah to do the same. Or was Mr. Côté anticipating that Israel would do the surrendering?Charles Evans, Toronto.

Marc Côté makes the extraordinary com-parison between the current conflict in the Middle east and the situation the united States was in at the end of the Second World War. he claims that the Marshall Plan brought peace because the Americans wisely eschewed retribution in the form of Versailles-style reparations.

he thinks that this sort of fresh approach, which is to be exemplified on Israel’s side by its refusal to rise to the bait of thou-sands of rockets fired at it from Gaza, secure under the shelter of Iron dome, would lead to opportunities for long-term peace.

Aside from the simplistic nature of this analysis of the post-war condition, the comparison completely ignores the fact that hamas exists specifically to destroy Israel. Only the hopelessly naive could believe that these terrorists could be con-vinced to start loving their neighbours. This is not bringing a fresh approach to the problem; it is the merely wishful thinking.Simon A. Brooks, Lunenburg, N.S.

Re: U.S. Chafes At Israeli Criticism, July 29.upon the outbreak of hostilities between Israel — the only democratic state in the Middle east — and hamas, u.S. President Barack Obama’s reaction was one of moral equivalency. This begs the ques-tion: What was the purpose of branding hamas a terrorist organization, if one does not recognize acts of terrorism when one sees it?

Should the hostilities end with hamas remaining capable of resorting to vio-lence, it will be a victory and a source of inspiration for the various terrorist groups in their war against western policies and society. Conversely, the free nations of the world have an opportunity to inflict a de-cisive defeat on one such group, hamas, by giving Israel its full support.

The loss of any life is a horrible tragedy, but these terrorist organizations consider violence to be the only way of achieving their ends. On the other hand, Colonel Justin Kemp, a British army officer with experience in the previous battles in Gaza testified before a uN commission that the Israel defense Forces did more to safe-guard the rights of civilians in combat zones than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel is the free world’s first line of defence against Islamic terrorism. It be-hooves the leaders of the free world to summon the courage to support Israel. This will send a message to each and every terrorist group that, in the face of violence, the free world will stand strong and prevail.Sam Mitnick, Côte St. Luc, Que.

The people of Palestine sealed their fate when they voted hamas into power. The leaders and followers of hamas are reli-gious zealots who have one objective: the destruction of the State of Israel. Those Palestinians who suffer and die as a result of this objective are seen as a cost of doing business. The uN and the united States need to be supporting Israel in no uncer-tain terms, or other fanatical groups will be emboldened.Leone Wright, Surrey, B.C.

‘The free world will stand strong and prevail’

K e v i n G. L y n c h a n d K a r e n M i s K e

W ith our abundant reserves and large capacity for exports,

Canada could be a world lead-er in developing our liquid natural gas (LNG) supplies. Instead, we are lagging behind our competitors.

China recently signed a $400-billion LNG deal with russia. The u.S. department of energy gave the green light to seven new LNG projects. And the construction of large pro-jects in Australia and Mozam-bique are currently under way.

energy security is becom-ing an urgent priority for many rapidly growing Asian econ-omies. Our competitors — in-cluding Australia, russia and the united States — are moving to lock in long-term export con-tracts with those countries.

Amidst all this global action, how is Canada positioned? In British Columbia, we are still waiting for the first LNG pro-ject to receive approval. We have a number of proposed pipelines that would move oil to the West Coast, but no over-arching statement of national purpose or government leader-ship. The west-to-east pipeline appears to have more broad-based support, but still faces numerous regulatory hurdles in what is sure to be a lengthy approval process.

In Asia, where government matters in building long-term economic relationships, the Canadian government has been inconsistent at best. Nor do we have a coherent strategy when it comes to exporting to europe — a region in desperate need of secure energy supplies.

In this rapidly changing world, where early Canadian projects would generate cru-cial momentum, attract inter-national investment and shape our energy export future, we have to up our game. Canada is not only missing out on many lucrative opportunities around the world, we are doing our-selves a disservice by not di-versifying our export market beyond the united States.

here are five elements that could contribute to a diversifi-cation of Canada’s energy ex-ports, in a manner that would allow us to be competitive and take advantage of emerging markets.

First, we need to foster a broad public dialogue on our energy future. If energy export diversification is in the national interest, not just private inter-ests, then the dialogue should be about the public interest in energy diversification, rather than a series of narrow debates about specific projects.

This will take leadership from both governments and the business community. As the debate over free trade demon-strated, Canadians are willing to reject the status quo and make transformative changes, but only if they are engaged in a meaningful public discussion — one that fosters an under-standing of the potential risks and benefits of any proposed policy change.

Second, we need to obtain “social license” for pivotal change. A key element of gaining support for change is establishing confidence that the change is in the public interest. When we negotiated the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the united States, there were concerns about the competitiveness of Canadian firms and fears about job losses. yet, governments were

able to take steps to allay both these concerns.

When it comes to pipelines to the coast, many are con-cerned about the potential environmental risks and the adequacy of consultations with First Nations. Surely, having obtained social license for the FTA, we can find appropriate mechanisms to reduce environ-mental risks and deal reason-ably with Aboriginal issues.

Third, we need a competi-tive environment for Canadian energy producers. Govern-ments have to set fiscal and royalty regimes that balance international competitiveness and a reasonable return to the taxpayers of the province where the resources are extracted.

Corporations are also sensi-tive to the tax and royalty en-vironment, and they have op-tions in other jurisdictions. They also highly value long-term policy certainty and, in this regard, the fact that the B.C. government has yet to formalize the LNG income tax proposed in its February 2014 budget, adds uncertainty and can contribute to project delays.

There are also concerns about whether Canada has enough skilled labour to meet the future needs of major ener-gy projects. There are currently

13 proposed LNG projects in B.C. If three or four of them come to fruition, it is question-able as to whether Canada will have enough skilled labour to fill all the positions. British Col-umbia has begun to develop a skilled trades plan, but it needs to be much larger in scale and more national in scope.

Fourth, we need to be in-novators in the production and distribution of our energy re-serves. Canada has an impres-sive history of innovation in natural resource extraction and processing, and we need to step up our investments in all as-pects of unconventional energy production and distribution.

Fifth, we need to think more strategically about our energy future, make long-term plans and act with a greater sense of urgency. Notwithstanding our professed desire to be an ener-gy superpower, we lack a na-tional energy strategy. And we have many competitors — such as the u.S., Australia and num-erous countries in east Africa — that are approaching this energy transformation more strategically than us. We simply cannot afford these shortcom-ings, if we are to be a global energy player.

LNG exports to China, South Korea, India, Taiwan and Japan represent an enormous oppor-tunity for Canada. energy ex-ports can also be a beachhead for other sectors in these emer-ging markets. But the window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. Canada must act, and it must do so with ef-ficiency and purpose, or these energy export opportunities will pass us by.

National Post

Kevin G Lynch is the vice-chair-man of BMO Financial Group;

Karen Miske is a senior advisor at BMO Financial Group.

Becoming an energy

superpower

We are doing ourselves

a disservice by not diversifying

our export market

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