I was talking about how PM Trudeau did little to stem foreign ownership in spite of numerous reports that it was becoming a problem. I guess in all fairness PM Mulroney was probably even worse for selling Canada off.
Prior to Trudeau, there weren’t any restrictions on foreign ownership. During his time in office, the federal government passed the first legislation that regulated foreign ownership, the Foreign Investment Review Act, which was administered by the Foreign Investment Review Agency.
When Mulroney came to power, the federal government drastically cut back on the powers of the agency.
See the wiki article for a few more details: Foreign Investment Review Agency.
As noted within that wiki, the Liberal-initiated Watkins Report was released in 1968, the same year Trudeau took office. It wasn’t until five years later that his government saw fit to do anything about the Watkins Report, during a period when the NDP were forcing the minority Liberals to act regarding the nation’s economic issues.
Although the Foreign Investment Review Agency acted to limit the amount of new foreign investors in Canada, its mandate did not extend to controlling the foreign investors who already had a stake in the Canadian economy, allowing them to continue to grow their Canadian interests significantly. While Mulroney certainly threw the doors wide open for foreign investment, the Trudeau government’s actions in the 70s were not nearly as significant as history tries to tell us.
Spoons, you’re right - it has been much easier for tobacco farmers to side step into other crops like soybeans than it will be for workers in the oil industry to side step into, what? The thing I like about that analogy is the sweeping social change that happened from the 60s up to the present day. Whenever someone says that society can’t handle the changes necessary to drastically reduce our oil consumption, I point to the radical decline in smoking and the institution of same-sex marriage as examples of ideas that were inconceivable in my childhood that are now established.
**Leaffan **- We’ve made some strides in green technology, I grant you. We are not making enough progress in reduction of consumption, and I find that deeply frustrating.
There seems to be an attitude of “We can’t eliminate petroleum, so there’s no point in even trying.” in our society. I can’t agree with it - every reduction in pollution, energy usage and carbon emissions is a victory. Iain Banks used the term ‘miraculist thinking’, to describe the notion that there will be one perfect solution to a complex problem, a ‘silver bullet’ that will cure all cancers or solve climate change. It doesn’t work that way; maybe geo-thermal heating will drastically reduce home heating costs in some parts of the country. But it’s not a panacea - vast tracts of BC don’t have enough topsoil above the bedrock to dig deep enough. Well-style vertical pipes? Might work; I don’t know because I haven’t investigated that one. It’s just that it’s much more likely that the internal combustion engine will be replaced by several different ideas that compete with each other until one proves its merits to be greater than the others. In the process, ideas will be taken from one solution and applied to others. Maybe we’ll have years of solar powered vs. electric vs. hydrogen vs. bio-diesel hybrids vs. I don’t know what. But allowing our energy consumption, carbon emissions and levels of pollution to continue to increase is not viable.
Anyway, no - we have a long way to go as a society toward finding the most efficient use of the technology that we’re stuck with, and I feel like we (as a society) have wasted the last 40 years making excuses.
The market isn’t set up to find ecological efficiencies, it’s set up to find market efficiencies. I’m of the opinion that we need to find a way to put the value of the air quality, soil quality and water quality that are being used up into the system. Whether that’s a carbon tax (in my opinion, the best proposal we’ve had so far) or another system of incentives/disincentives, I think it’s what we need to do.
Cat Whisperer - I’m a bit of an anomaly among my environmentalist friends, in that I’m one of the few who has a cautiously positive opinion of nuclear power. It’s the cleanest form of energy we have at present, until something goes wrong, when it becomes the dirtiest in the space of days.
I have to go get some work done, but I’m glad we can have a respectful discussion among friends on big issues like this.
Uzi - Actually, I’m really interested to hear your impressions of the level of pollution in China at the present time. What we see on the news are reports of highway traffic jams that last for a week, and smog days that lead to school cancellations and businesses shutting down.
That’s one of my chief concerns about selling our petroleum products to China, versus, say the US - I have very little faith that they aren’t just going to put it straight into the atmosphere and damn the rest of us. If we have to build a pipeline, I’d rather we built one to the US where the environmental movement at least has some influence.
I think the step that often gets missed from either side of the discussion is that you have to start from where you are now, not at some magical point that only exists in people’s imaginations. The city of Calgary is terrible for doing that - they put in a new light rail line, but don’t put in any parking lots for it, because they want people to only take transit, rather than accepting that people will often drive to the train and then take transit from there. They can’t accept that a 50% reduction in car usage is better than a 0% car usage reduction, so a lot of people just don’t take transit because it’s too damned inconvenient.
Agreed. Every little bit helps, in my opinion. When we visited large tourist attractions in California last summer, we were extremely disappointed to find that some of the biggest ones had no recycle bins at all! I can’t even imagine how many pop bottles go into the trash instead of being recycled every day there - tens of thousands? They could make one fairly small change there, and make a huge difference.
Agreed. I think the majority of people at this point are getting it - we need to make some serious changes, and do it pretty damned quick. The changes have to be aimed at corporations, though - us little guys aren’t making that big a difference overall.
Me too. 
I think we do need to go after nuclear in a big way - we just have to do it very, very carefully. One thing that strikes me in an odd way - we seem to be okay with having trains carrying oil products all over the place (through populated areas), and every week we hear a news story of a train derailment and a toxic spill of some kind, but the very idea of building an extremely rigidly controlled nuclear reactor out in the ass end of nowhere makes people shriek with outrage. We need to get our heads straight.
China and India are a big, BIG problem for the future of humanity on the planet. They can’t do what North America has been doing because we’ll all lose if they do, but how do we tell them they can’t? How do we stop them from doing it?
Jimbo and Cat Whisperer, it seems a bit harsh to criticize Trudeau for how little he did, when his government did more than any other government on this issue. Also, my recollection is that FIRA brought a lot of criticism on the government, for stifling investment and free enterprise, from places like Toronto and Calgary. In the West, there was also a sentiment that FIRA was an attempt by easterners to control the west’s economy, ranking up there with the NEP. I’m not sure he could have done much more.
Wait, what? Aren’t the Chinese and Indians humans like us?
I think the idea is that India and China trying to completely emulate N.America’s cheap energy/ wasteful ways will endanger all of us. We have to strike a balance of what we use and cut back on the grossly excessive waste NA generates. We have a long way to go.
Cat: My point wasn’t that the problems we have been discussing are unimportant, far from it, but that people (especially the media) have a tendency to further an agenda using sound bites rather than trying to look at the bigger picture or propose something that might ameliorate it. I’m not trying to trivialize any of the discussions we are having by a long shot.
To add insult to injury, Calgary Transit, which used to offer free all-day parking at its C-Train stations that had parking lots (a great incentive to take the train), now charges drivers for parking there.
But I’d suggest also that it’s a two-way street. One thing I find about Albertans is that they just don’t consider public transit to be a viable alternative to driving themselves. I don’t think it’s because Albertans have a “who cares; we have all the oil in the world” mentality; but rather, it’s because they have never encountered a truly efficient and effective form of public transit at reasonable cost. Rather than getting on a main road and staying there, buses meander through residential neighbourhoods, taking an hour or more to get someplace that is accessible in ten minutes of driving. In a way, it’s a Catch 22: Most Albertans don’t take public transit because it sucks; and it sucks because few Albertans pay to take it.
One area where we really fall down is moving people around the province. For those who don’t wish to drive themselves, two options are presented: air and bus. The latter is expensive; the former is infrequent, and often takes longer to get someplace than a car. Even a commuter rail system around Calgary and Edmonton, similar to Ontario’s GO train system, would likely improve things–then, we wouldn’t see people driving in from Airdrie, High River, Cochrane, and Strathmore. But until we implement intercity or commuter rail, or make air less expensive, or put on more buses–in other words, make public transit an efficient and economical option–Albertans will figure that driving themselves is the best way to go.
Ontario’s GO train system? More like the GTA’s GO train system.
Public transportation outside of that Hamilton to Oshawa corridor sucks in the rest of Ontario. Ottawa is just starting to build a light rail system, but it will be much focused on the downtown core for now. But, hey, it’s a start and there are plans to branch it out to Kanata and Orleans by the time I’m dead.
As to this, what the heck are you talking about? Aside from the fact that Petro Canada could not have been sold “back” to anyone when the federal government did not buy it from anyone in the first place, it’s owned largely by Suncor, a Canadian company.
I guess I could have been clearer. It is in the GTA, but it is operated by the Government of Ontario (hence “GO”). Sorry for any confusion.
[QUOTE=Le Ministre de l’au-delà]
By the way, I’ve heard this “we’re cleaning up nature’s oil spill” before. Inthis picture, the image on the left is the ‘before’, the image on the right is the 'after. That’s a very poor clean up.
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That’s not cleaned up. That’s could well be a picture of an active project.
If it were cleaned up, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from a picture.
It is getting increasingly difficult to get a reclamation certificate in Alberta - they only get issued when you have truly cleaned up the site - it often takes many years to achieve.
And regarding Albertans (or Calgarians and transit)…
I can take the bus for 30 minutes, and then the train for 20 to get to work.
OR…I could drive for 18 minutes. Hmmm. Which should I pick???
Now, I am fortunate enough to be able to pay to park downtown - lots of people aren’t. Even if I were to drive to the nearest train station - it would take me the same amout of time to get to the station as it does to get to my parking spot downtown.
That explains Calgary.
Thanks for your valuable input.
Anytime. Glad it proved valuable to you.
I’m in the 11th province right now. Greetings from Florida! I’ll try not to gloat too much. It’s only proving to be a thirty degree swing so far, which is a bit disappointing! 
It’s been a brutal week here in Ottawa Antonio. It will be -7 tomorrow. I plan on barbequing and dancing naked in the back yard. What a winter so far.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t set an all-time record for number of skating days on the canal.
One of the strongest advocates for much tighter regulation on foreign investment during Trudeau’s first term in office was an Edmonton Liberal by the name of Mel Hurtig. According to his memoir, when he asked Trudeau face-to-face about the Watkins report in 1968, he was told point blank that he was out of line to even inquire about the issue. This was one of the final nails in the coffin for Hurtig’s participation in the Liberal Party.
Trudeau was already almost universally despised in the west by the time FIRA was introduced so it doesn’t surprise me in the least that any initiative he introduced would be criticised. Having said that, had he taken strong steps to curb foreign investment earlier in his time in the PMO, he would have at least maintained the support of his supporters in Alberta, rather than lose them as well.
Trudeau was the first prime minister to have all the information and recommendations on hand to effectively do something about foreign investment. The fact that he ignored that opportunity until his minority government was forced to respond—and the fact that FIRA was a far cry from the recommendations laid out by Watkins—are a condemnation of his lack of focus on the Canadian economy during his first decade in office, in my humble opinion. Trudeau was a powerful, charismatic man who was consistently able to push his agenda through the House of Commons without compromise; the watered-down, slow-to-be-initiated nature of his government’s foreign investment policy speaks directly to the low priority he placed on this issue.
Had Trudeau taken bold action in 1968, rather than sitting on his hands for years, foreign investment would have been truly controlled, the west would have still hated him (no loss there) and we might not be in our current predicament where reform to the current foreign investment legislation is next to impossible to push through because (among other things) foreign interests own two thirds of our oil reserves.