Dear Editor,

With neighbours like Alberta Premier Alison Redford, what province needs enemies?

First, she insists that we B.C.ers really should allow the Northern Gateway project's oilsands-crude-flowing duelpipelines run through our entire province and to our pristine northern west coast, where mega-oil-tankers every day or two load up with bitumen (after dropping off the bitumen thinning chemical that is to flow back to Alberta), then manoeuvre their way between rock-filled coast and islands on their way westward to East Asia.

B.C. would get a small royalty percentage for Redford's appreciation, plus an alleged 1,166, direct/indirect jobs, though mostly limited to a few years in duration.

Other than that, B.C. gets pretty much nada. except for almost 100 per cent of the environmental risks and ecosystem-loss costs if (or eventually when) there's a major spill.

All the while, Alberta gets almost all of the black-gold revenues.

It's kind of like when ex-Alberta premier Ralph Klein gave his "able-bodied" welfare recipients a one-way bus ticket to B.C. - in his mind, the land of welfare-state plenty.

Then, to express her friendship with B.C. in regards to our imminent annual loss of $250 million in federal health-care funding because of Ottawa's new system of per capita funding transfers to the provinces, Redford, whose province has an annual nine-to-10-digit gain from the new funding system, stated that she supports the new per capita funding, ".where everyone is equal."

Although, it's apparently acceptable, in Redford's mind, that some provinces are a little more equal than others.

Frank G. Sterle, Jr., White Rock