Well of course, that’s why we have them in the first place. It’s a question of framing and the typical “Ontario paid billions to…” implies the province had 10 billion waiting to be used but just had to hand the money over.
The CanaDoper Café (2012 edition of The great, ongoing Canadian current events and politics thread.)
It’s probably my post that’s being discussed here, and yes, what I meant was Ontario was paying more in taxes than was received back in transfers. Now we’re getting more back than we’re paying in.
Alberta is paying a lot more than they’re receiving back, but who knows what that will look like 50 years from now.
The biggest blunder that Canada,(Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) ever made was to give Albertans provincial status and rights to to the resources of Alberta just 37 years after buying a good portion of Alberta from the Hudsons Bay Company for 27 million dollars. Alberta can expect to receive over a trillion dollars in royalties from oil.
Who cares? It’s great that Alberta has access to a resource everyone wants. It’s phenomenal that it’s making Canadians living in Alberta (and elsewhere) wealthy. It’s problematic that the provincial GDP is going to spike and push some other provinces below the average per capita GDP.
So we’ve got the oil and people want it and we want to sell it. The royal we of course.
The question is, given resource companies are notorious for externalizing their exploitation costs to governments how do we ensure the environment and our pocket books don’t wind up sacrificed to short term gains. Personally I think the pipeline is workable but a spill with all of that crinkly coastline strikes me as a hellish job to contain and correct.
Do I ever wish there was a standardized sarcastic font.
I do hope you are being sarcastic, because it’s attitudes like that that end up fueling politicos like the Wild Rose party.
I’ll make over a million dollars in my lifetime, but that doesn’t make me a millionaire. Alberta has also given the oil companies huge reductions in taxes during development phases to spur growth. Yes, Alberta (And Canada) stands to gain a significant amount of money from oil. It pales compared to the amount of money that will flow from N.Alberta, to Houston or Beijing via Calgary. For the most part I’m OK with a company making a reasonable profit (Companies that don’t aren’t solvent very long). Extracting resources is expensive, and it takes a lot of up front risk and capital for a pay off that may or may not occur; capitalism in action.
What I take exception to is foreign companies owning it all, and dictating how and where OUR resource will be sent. That’s not in the best interests of Canada at large.
Leaffan and Uzi make good points. Since we are pulling the oil out of the ground it will have to go somewhere, and pipelines are the most efficient, and likely safest, means of carrying it. That doesn’t mean we blithely allow any company to make excessive profits at the expense of the indigenous flora and fauna (including us.) It’s easy to say the roads must roll, but it’s a different story when the road takes out your home, or back yard. Ask the shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico if they are as sanguine about sharing thier livelihood with Big Oil. Or the people whose drinking water is now explosive near fracking operations.
Shortcutting environmental impact studies and pushing through without carrying out due diligence or forethought for political expediency is a sure way to keep repeating the same sorry errors we see with Enbridge, BP, and other oil producers. Accidents are going to happen, everyone can acknowledge that, surely. But we don’t have to accept that running new pipelines is the ONLY way.
Is there sufficient capacity on existing pipelines to carry what we will produce? Is the Northern Gateway the only way to efficiently carry the oil to market? If we have undercapacity refineries in the East, why isn’t the bitumen flowing that way? Jobs in Ontario and Quebec, jobs in the Prairies, jobs everywhere. Shipping costs are the lowest common denominator so if China wants oil and gas they can get it the long way round via the St. Lawrence.
Plus, the companies are bound by tighter N.American regulations so an incident like Bhopal,India/DOW Chemical are much less likely.
Unfortunately, we have a government more concerned with selling off Canada than safeguarding what makes it great.
I love driving my powerful 4x4 everywhere I go.
I also love buying inexpensive goods which were made in China.
I certainly don’t believe either fossil fuels, or China, are going to become less important to my life, or the lives of my descendants any time soon.
I think they already do - Canada is the largest importer of oil to the US.
That’s something that it would behoove Albertans to remember - the oil won’t last forever, and we need to be prepared for that reality (I don’t get the impression we are, and it’s going to be a scramble to create more industry when the oil’s gone).
I’m not getting why that is problematic - don’t the equalization payments help with that?
I’d like to see a lot more thought given to the ecological costs of oil exploitation, too. The oil’s not going anywhere; we can take it out in a slower, more thoughtful way and not create ecological disasters and still make tons of money.
Good post, swampspruce. I’d argue that the feds aren’t totally into selling off Canada - they did kibosh that big potash deal in Saskatchewan, after all.
{Forgot to address this} What a weird thing to say. It almost sounds like you’re saying that you don’t think Albertans are legitimate Canadians like people in the original four provinces.
Yep. The problematic piece will be the bitching, moaning, political crocodile tears and fingerpointing between provinces. I mean it wont be anything new, I just figure it’ll go to 11.
It’ll be back on after the election. It was one of the conditions of the environmental lobby that supports Obama.
Speaking on behalf of the lucky cyclists who have to wear a smog mask to ride in Canadian cities, I’d like to assure drivers like you that you are always in our thoughts, even though it’s painfully obvious you don’t spare a moment’s thought for us.
I never knew that there was a diver named Riley Mccormick on the Canadian team. Too bad he isn’t from Calgary.
It has nothing to do with legitimacy. It was Canada’s oil and they gave it away to a small group of Canadians at the expense of all other Canadians. They didn’t make the same mistake in the US where the newly formed western states were not gifted federal lands .
Of course we do. We have to pry your twisted and mangled body out from under our undercarriages and live with the smell of burning flesh and hair for weeks afterwords.
Now if you said we don’t care about you, you’d be correct.
Happy long weekend to most Canadian dopers!
I’m off to a friend’s cottage after work to celebrate my half-century birthday. (Which was yesterday actually.)
I’ll let you know how it went on Monday, if I live.
Oh yeah, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Happy Long weekend everyone!
That’s still a weird attitude - wasn’t it Quebec that was hosing Newfoundland for hydro a couple of years ago? It should all belong to all of Canada only if it’s located in the west?
Aw shucks, Pauline Marois leader of the PQ wont be attending the English debates because her English isn`t good enough.
Odd, considering she`s an ardent champion of Official Languages in the Public Service.
It`s bewildering being a bilingual Anglophone in Quebec sometimes, you can really feel the love. 
Look, it is what it is. Provincial usurpation of crown land is a done deal albeit a stupid one for the vast majority of Canadians. The rest of us would have liked to avoid sales tax and basic medical insurance premiums too.
As far as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is concerned, I recall the Gulf oil spill cost BP 20 billion dollars. That is way more than BC is gonna get if they bend over and approve the pipeline. I doubt Enbridge has the pockets to clean up and restore and make good a bitumen oil spill along a river approaching an inlet. And who is gonna cover and make good a bitumen oil spill into our deep inlets. That shit sinks to the bottom, also the bottom of the food chain for our valuable marine life. Its beyond weird. Its all madness to suggest that B.C. should accept this proposal as is. Moreso , no amount of money would make it right.
grumble grumble aww shaddup.
Pauline Marois is the individual on this planet that is doing the most harm to the province of Québec. It’s not because she’s a separatist (I don’t agree with the movement, but don’t think it’s sufficient to earn that dishonour), but because she’s a loud, ardent, stupid separatist who is a transparent opportunist, a barely veiled bigot and an all-around insulting and condescending individual who can’t understand just how crazy she is. She thinks that power is earned on the backs of others, has no trouble throwing people under the bus to suit her short-sighted purposes and thinks everyone else is dumber than she is.
I am no fan of Charest, but I can’t in my right mind vote for a party with Marois at the helm (something I may have considered doing, if only to “punish” the Liberals, even though I don’t support sovereignty), and I have yet to see anything worth voting for from the other parties. I have no idea what I’m going to do this election, because voting my conscience isn’t an option, since none of the parties even seem to have one to begin with, let alone one in line with my values. :smack:
It’s going to be a long summer.