Norway sets aside proceeds from oil and gas production and now has an investment fund worth 8,140 billion NOK, which is about $1.3 trillion Canadian. Given the present population, that’s more than $250,000 for every man, woman and child.
This weekend, Kinder Morgan Canada Limited (KML) suspended all “non-essential activities and related spending” on its Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. They blamed “continued actions in opposition to the project.” That’s only part of the story…
Does Justin Trudeau identify with the thousands of people who demonstrated in opposition to Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion or the handful of people who showed up to an industry sponsored counter protest?
Every megaproject conceived and executed by BC Liberals in recent years has ended with massive cost overruns, despite the predictable “on-time and on-budget” claims. Most involved contractors with foreign domiciles. Check out the Port Mann bridge project, South Fraser Perimeter Road, BC Place renovation, Vancouver Convention Centre, Sea to Sky Highway, Northwest Transmission Line, etc.
G20 country governments are providing $444 billion a year in subsidies for the production of fossil fuels. In Canada, at the federal level, this amounts to a minimum of $1.6 billion, mainly through tax expenditures. At the provincial level, tax breaks amount to a minimum of $979 million annually. In fact, the numbers are even larger. Fossil fuel companies recognize values gained when sympathetic politicians are there to determine financial policies so oil and gas producers spend extravagantly to sustain a synergetic relationship. In recent years, they’ve courted journalists and media companies whose financial comforts have been in decline. Many of those have turned out to be of easy virtue.
Reader Ken Barry today submitted a comment to an article written last July – Log exports update. It reminds of a subject that’s close to my heart and, I think, an illustration […]
GDP measures income, but not equality, it measures growth, but not destruction, and it ignores values like social cohesion and the environment. – OECD If a province allows extraction of natural resources […]
Trudeau says Indigenous people can teach the world how to care for the planet, APTN National News, November 30, 2015: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a speech in Paris that Indigenous […]
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver made certain intemperate remarks about radical foreign “billionaire socialists,” by which he did not mean the unelected billionaires who run the Chinese People’s Congress in Beijing, but rather American matinee idols who enjoy heli-skiing vacations in the Kootenay Mountains. The servility of Canada’s political leaders (municipal, provincial and federal) to the obvious manipulations of Chinese strategists who flaunt world trade and financial market principles and jail democracy-promoting authors for 10-year terms is a national disgrace.”
It is been long apparent that the National Energy Board is not an industry regulator. It is an industry facilitator that is staffed by people who serve the fossil fuel industry and […]
If British Columbia continues to encourage the production and transport of coal, gas and oil, we are blowing poisons into the faces of earth’s future generations. I know something about that, I […]
Note 11 from a study by John Calvert and Marjorie Griffin Cohen of Simon Fraser University, Climate Change and the Canadian Energy Sector: “In this regard it is interesting to compare the […]
Ever notice that corporate media seems to speak with one voice? On balance – or rather, on lack-of-balance – they do. It is the voice of big business. Vaughn Palmer was a columnist lobbing fat pitches into the wheelhouse of natural gas promoters.
At times, I wonder if mainstream political journalism in BC is written by the uninformed for the uninformed. Gary Mason provided an example to consider when he commented on the latest threat […]
Regular readers are aware that British Columbia’s natural gas industry provides surprisingly little return to the province by way of royalties for depleting non-renewable public assets. In the last two fiscal years, […]
Friday, The Common Sense Canadian — a site that usually provides worthwhile journalism — posted an article written by Keith Baldrey for Glacier Media, publisher of numerous community recyclables. Not surprisingly, anyone […]
BC Liberals are reluctant spenders when it comes to improving public schools. However, they’re not reluctant to put money into the pockets of natural gas producers. The amounts are in the billions […]
People reacted to a tweet of information first published at Northern Insight. Many read it but do not want to believe it, because, as much as anything, this demonstrates whom the BC […]
Replay of article first published in November 2013. Despite claims that natural gas will last almost forever and drop massive wealth into BC’s treasury, I’ve demonstrated here, with numbers taken from finance […]
A replay, first posted October 2013. It is important to consider that the $868 million shown as FY 2013 income from crown land tenures is mostly recognition of exploration rights sold in […]
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