Alberta has long been a puppet of the oil and gas business but Kenney’s compulsion to deliver benefits to this private sector is unprecedented. It is as if Alberta’s right wing government looked at what Norway has been doing and decided to do the exact opposite. In the first 13 weeks of the 2019-20 fiscal year, Alberta’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund declined by $156 million to $18 billion. In the last eight weeks, Norway’s wealth fund increased by C$55 billion, a rise of 4% to C$1.46 trillion.
Oil at $10-$20 a barrel?
Oil has a massive incumbency advantage. The industry has invested heavily in politicians and corporate media, the fools and tools it needs to keep billions of dollar in subsidies flowing from the public to the private sector…
Sacrificing the future
Norway made a choice to take a material share of oil and gas revenues and distribute the value of its non-renewable resources to citizens over multiple generations. Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan chose to benefit whichever corporations happened to be involved when production of oil and gas took place…
Whoppers, big and small
Charles Adler believes we should speak clearly. However, he said nothing about speaking accurately, a quality not always compatible with political propaganda.
Fossil fuel fanaticism
Fossil fuel promoters had either not read the FCA judgment, or reject it for their own reasons. Many of these people applauded when a court jailed opponents of Trans Mountain expansion but judge the courts wrong when they disagree with a decision.
Ministry’s cozy relationship with industry costs taxpayers billions
As is typical of resource management, the regulating ministry sees its prime purpose is to enhance growth and profitability of companies extracting resources. the public share of produced values is no longer material. This cozy relationship costs taxpayers billions of dollars, money that could be spent on renewable energy, transit, daycare, education or many other responsibilities of government.
Canadian natural resources almost given away to mostly foreign owned producers
In Norway, with 5.3 million people, upstream petroleum companies are subject to a 27% petro tax plus a special tax of 51%. Alberta petroleum tax is less than 4%. BC’s is near zero.
Canada inflating the carbon bubble
Canada, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan are today committed to pumping billions of dollars into the inevitable carbon bubble. Delaying transition to renewables to extract additional wealth from fossil fuels is dangerous Smarter people than Notley and Trudeau prefer a different approach.
Climate change denial and the economic policy of idiots
Committing billions of taxpayers’ dollars to ensure the public carries all economic risks of the Trans Mountain project is not only financially unsound, it requires a commitment to climate change denial similar to that of Trump’s EPA assassin Scott Pruitt. The positions of Canada and Alberta show absolute ignorance of today’s economic world…
We’re robbed and federal competition agency is silent
Removing the impact of gas tax and GST, our American neighbours pay as much as 38¢ a litre less. That amounts to $23 for a 60 litre fill-up. Based on average consumption, we suffer about $1,000 a year in excess charges for each vehicle. It appears that industry collusion and lack of competition are main factors.
Canadians spit into the wind
Slowing of growth in carbon emissions falls well short of the sharp drop in carbon emissions thought necessary to achieve Paris climate goals. We need a far more decisive break from the past…
Norway’s national wealth fund
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.
Inevitable change
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…
Questions
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?
Socialized losses, privatized gains
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.
Politics, journalism and easy virtue
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.
A reader comments on forestry
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 […]
Rich lands, poor people
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 […]
Mr. Prime Minister, start pushing British Columbia
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 […]
Pipeline to Beijing
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.”
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