I wish to con­grat­u­late you for giv­ing promi­nence in your is­sue of No­vem­ber 15, to Pe­ter In­gle­field's ex­cel­lent com­men­tary on the sub­ject of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my. There should be whole­sale mul­ti-sec­toral sup­port for the opin­ions ex­pressed there­in and sus­tained calls for a strate­gic re­sponse to the press­ing need for ac­tion up­on, not lip-ser­vice to, the diminu­tion of de­pen­dence up­on our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources, be they de­plet­ing or not.

Vi­sion 20/20 which was the prod­uct of thou­sands of hours of the best brains in our coun­try was al­lowed to fes­ter by the very Gov­ern­ment that spon­sored its pro­duc­tion. In­evitably, that Gov­ern­ment's suc­ces­sor has ig­nored its ex­is­tence and, worse, failed to of­fer an al­ter­na­tive strate­gic, I in­ten­tion­al­ly re­peat the word, al­ter­na­tive to se­cur­ing long term eco­nom­ic well be­ing.

May I use your news­pa­pers to ap­peal not on­ly to the busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions, but to the labour move­ment and acad­e­mia to press re­lent­less­ly for na­tion­al de­bate on cre­at­ing the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment which en­gen­ders op­ti­mism for all cit­i­zens in the decades to come. With­out such re­al­is­tic eval­u­a­tion of a sus­tain­able fu­ture in­vest­ment dol­lars will con­tin­ue to find homes over­seas, the brain drain ac­cel­er­ate and our so­ci­ety tear it­self apart.

Hen­ry Pe­ter Gan­teaume,

FCA