What happens to Canadians economy when the oilsands up belly up?

Sat, 2014-02-15 11:42

voice of the damned

While the centre of power in this country shift back to central Canada from Alberta?

What exactly do people mean when they say the "centre of power" is in Alberta? Okay, the current prime minister happens to be from there, but there's no guarantee that the next prime minister will be from there, even if the Conservatives remain in power and the oil industry continues to turn a good profit.

And I would assume that Alberta's economic influence in Canada was about the same as it is now, going back at least to Jean Chretien, who of course was not an Albertan, and had next to no representation from that province.

Sat, 2014-02-15 11:51

#3

quizzical

i find the whole centre of power meme weird!!!! you gotta be from ON no one out here in the west talks or thinks like that. Not even in AB I've been back and forth all over the oil patch in the last 2 years and you never hear the workers talking about AB being the centre of power in canada and they're all from everywhere else. and how do you think young people don't drive as much?

Sat, 2014-02-15 11:52

#4

NorthReport

You have to be kidding.

There is another 100 years of tarsand production just waiting to be exploited and jobs created.

That tap is not going to be turned off anytime soon.

Sat, 2014-02-15 12:47

#5

quizzical

ya NR i was going to say something along those lines too. i've been going back a forth to Grande Prairie lots recently and it is all oil patch and pipe line economy and its actually exciting to be there and startng a 2nd business. its a huge change from BC and victoria. i go into the malls and everyone is my age and they're all happy and working. sure there's some work related complaints but i think they'll lead to the next big union movement.

if you look at the stats in the link you'll find it's the youngest and fastest growing city in NA.

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:23

#6

Brachina

Yes right now, but that can change in an instant if Oil prices drop badly enough. And its not a question of supply, its a question of demand and how verious technologies can and will change that, causing prices to drop, which will kill the Oilsands because Oilsands are unpopular, expensive to produce. And I'm not saying tommorrow, but in the future.

And centre of Canada is a term I've seen pundits and politicians and politic staff use in articles, and it has more do with then who is PM and where they come from, but rather which part of the country is exerting the most political and economic influence.

I actually believe the next centre of influence in Canada will shift to Quebec and to a much lesser extent Ontario when the Alberta economy implodes and it will, its a when not an if.

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:38

#7

scott16

will there be mass hysteria, chaos, and confusion?

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:42

#8

NorthReport

The shift is of power to the West is basically permanent,or at least for the unforseeable future, and certainly within our lifetimes. Central Canada has had its day of exploiting the outlying provinces, just like Britain exploited the colonies. Canada is a resource-based country, always has been, and will continue to be so for generations to come. Once the LNG plants kick in, in BC, combinied with the tarsands and potash industries, and the milder climate in the Lower Mainland of BC, Canada could be in jeopardy of tiping over into the Pacific Ocean, as so many Eastern (Anyone East of the Rockies) Canadians will soon be out here.

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:43

#9

voice of the damned

i find the whole centre of power meme weird!!!!

I think it's a confluence of largely unrelated factors, welded into an easily-absorbed media narrative.

You've got the tarsands and pipelines being talked about a lot, the PM being from Alberta, and people like Nenshi and to a lesser extent Redford and McIver appearing as more exciting politicians than are seen elsewhere in Canada(ie. exciting in a good way. Rob Ford is certainly exciting in the other way). So, this all combines to give the impression that, for better or worse, Alberta is "where it's happening" these days.

But a quick scan through the list of current cabinet members reveals that, apart from Harper himself, Albertans occupy none of what might be called the "indispensable" portfolios(Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs, and Defense). And from what I saw, Albertans are not represented in cabinet disproportionate to their caucus numbers.

As for the supposedly interesting local politicians, apart from his charismatic persona and "ethnic" novelty, Nenshi is basically a centrist, and Redford is actually to the right of at least two former Tory premiers. As for Edmonton, it's not unheard of the city to have a young, progressive mayor. Jan Reimer being in office for six years in the 90s.

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:47

#10

NorthReport

votd well said.

As if it matters one iota where the prime minister lives or comes from.

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:48

#11

scott16

Hopefully some of the people will eventually go to the Ring of Fire. Maybe that could be Ontario's oilsands?

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:52

#12

voice of the damned

And centre of Canada is a term I've seen pundits and politicians and politic staff use in articles, and it has more do with then who is PM and where they come from, but rather which part of the country is exerting the most political and economic influence.

Well, if you mean that governments are giving the tarsands priority in terms of determining policy, I'd agree with that. But I'm not sure that translates into Alberta itself being a centre of power. On the political front, Alberta does not have the lion's share of alloted seats in the Commons(or even the largest plurality), simply because its numbers don't warrant that.

But yes. If the oil sands were to go belly-up, then they would have less economic influence. That's pretty obvious.

Sat, 2014-02-15 13:54

#13

NorthReport

Prople will move to where the jobs are, or foreign workers will do the work.

And what about the growing drought in the SouthWEstern USA? Will people migrate away from the sunbelt or will we be diverting Canada's fresh water water South to help them?

Sat, 2014-02-15 14:25

#14

Brachina

http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-...

Read the above. A market crash is coming, not just in Oil, but also in other commodities like nickel and alumnium.

Side note The centre of influnce is about more then seats. Its about who manipulates the national adgenda.

Sat, 2014-02-15 14:41

#15

jas

NorthReport wrote:

You have to be kidding.

There is another 100 years of tarsand production just waiting to be exploited and jobs created.

That tap is not going to be turned off anytime soon.

No, North Report, not 100 years. Do you just pull this shit out of your ass? Not even industry is pretending that the tar sands are an indefinite resource.

As for the tap "not going to be turned off", I'm glad you're happy and making money as a pipeline grunt, but pimping Canada's finite resources is not exactly progressive commentary.

Sat, 2014-02-15 15:01

#16

NorthReport

That's where you and I differ amigo, as good paying jobs are progressive in my book. Governments are responsible for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and you and your fellow Canadians elected our current governments.

Sat, 2014-02-15 15:18

#17

mmphosis

> What happens to Canadians' economy when the tarsands go belly up?

"Economy" as in the global stock market? The TSE? Or "economy" as in local trade and exchange?

I think that there are very different perspectives, and many issues are overlooked.

Cost of extraction, and is there even a return on investment? In terms of energy and valuable materials put in (like clean drinking water), for energy output and materials lost (like clean drinking water), I think that the tarsands lose.

Economics, money. The new "science" of economics overlooks "externalities": it does not account for priceless ecology, drinking water, clean air, quality soil and the list goes on. The financing ignores the fact that Canada's fiat currency is money as debt created out of nothing with interest money (that doesn't exist) being owed on that debt money.

Subsidies. Over ten years ago, the price of gas at the pump in Iraq was about six cents a liter, and the price for gas sold in a small liter bottle near a refugee camp somewhere in Africa was more than $15. In Canada, non-renewable petrochemical resource extraction has been subsidized to the nines for as long as I can remember. The price at the pump does not show costs of war, death, destruction, and billions of dollars a year given by the Canadian government to large corporations in the tarsands.

Renewables. Where I live, we are struggling to free ourselves from the addiction to petrochemicals. Electric vehicles of various types are a popular means of transport. We have one local manufacturer. The large nearby city has companies that convert fleets of vehicles. Locally, people have gone off the grid using wind, solar, and some non-renewables. Our community as a whole is looking to solar, wind and tidal power generation. There are no subsidies for renewables, and upfront costs are often prohibitive, but people are changing their behaviours anyways. The price going up at the pump is good for the tarsands, but it also encourages us to change our ways and avoid the gas pump altogether.

The tarsands going belly up resolves many problems.

To the Last Drop: Canada's Dirty Oil Sands - Part 1 (youtube.com)

Sex, Drugs and Alcohol Stalk the Streets of Fort McMurray (oilsandstruth.org)

Climate Change: I don't want to talk about it

no pipeline, no tankers, no problem

Sat, 2014-02-15 17:09

#18

jas

NorthReport wrote:

That's where you and I differ amigo, as good paying jobs are progressive in my book. Governments are responsible for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and you and your fellow Canadians elected our current governments.

There are lots of good paying jobs in oil and gas. Do you have any idea what executives in that field make? I guess you also love that most of the money leaves the country, just like the natural, finite resource does, and that citizens and taxpayers pay the environmental and ecological consequences.

I really didn't know it was progressive to cheerlead obscene profits at the expense of the common wealth and its natural resource base.

Sat, 2014-02-15 18:53

#19

6079_Smith_W

Heh?

Stephen Harper is from Ontario. His finance minister is from Ontario.

I think the perception that the power base has shifted at all from where it has always been (and that's not really geographic at all) is just central canadians freaked out at the notion that others might be threatening their supremacy. Even though, of course, none of us really win.

As an aside, I got a chance to grab a handful of bitumen this afternoon at the science centre in Edmonton. like grainy, heavy bread dough, and I could smell the stink of old motor oil and tar right through the plastic box it was encased in.

Sat, 2014-02-15 19:34

#20

iyraste1313

Oil sands projects must be seen in the context of the failing financial system, for which the governments and private central banks are desperately trying to hold back.....but the failing economies of China, Japan and the emerging markets has the international investment community in panic.This means increasing costs of capital investment in future expansion, which is freaking the financial mafia class. The true value of the fiat currencies are collapsing. expansion will stop...this is certain.

But the idea of where the centre of power is, that´s a joke on the people who still believe that governments in canada have anything to do with power. When they signed on to globalization...that signalled their betrayal of the people of this country and worldwide.

I fear Canada is little prepared for the consequences, and with virtually no leaders of any import prepared to speak up for this truth, and with the mass media in the pockets of the perpetrators, including and especially the CBC, we are facing a tragic situation here!

Sat, 2014-02-15 19:34

#21

iyraste1313

Oil sands projects must be seen in the context of the failing financial system, for which the governments and private central banks are desperately trying to hold back.....but the failing economies of China, Japan and the emerging markets has the international investment community in panic.This means increasing costs of capital investment in future expansion, which is freaking the financial mafia class. The true value of the fiat currencies are collapsing. expansion will stop...this is certain.

But the idea of where the centre of power is, that´s a joke on the people who still believe that governments in canada have anything to do with power. When they signed on to globalization...that signalled their betrayal of the people of this country and worldwide.

I fear Canada is little prepared for the consequences, and with virtually no leaders of any import prepared to speak up for this truth, and with the mass media in the pockets of the perpetrators, including and especially the CBC, we are facing a tragic situation here!

Sat, 2014-02-15 19:54

#22

NorthReport

If you want an idea of how badly Canada is fucking up, just look at how Norway is handling their oil and gas resources and how much they are putting away for a rainy day compared to Canada. We should have nationalized our natural resources for the good of all Canadians but no, our usless federal governments, and the rich provinces were just too cowardly or too greedy for that.

Now sit back and watch us lose our medicare system like we have basiically done in BC with all the private clinics croping up all over the place.

Is BC now the only province now where citizens have to individually pay health care premiums directly to the government?

Sat, 2014-02-15 20:08

#23

Winston

jas wrote:

No, North Report, not 100 years. Do you just pull this shit out of your ass? Not even industry is pretending that the tar sands are an indefinite resource.

To be fair, jas, the ass is usually precisely where shit comes from.

It is true that being in a boom town is exciting andthat booms provide good-paying jobs to young people. As someone whose family is from the Peace Country, I am also thrilled to see the region growing. But you are correct, jas, that oil and gas will not sustain us for 100 years. There are a number of reasons for this that go well beyond supply.

First among these is that between its investments in fracking and alternative energy, the U.S. may become energy self-sufficient in the next couple of decades. This is why the industry and the Alberta government are so desperate to get pipelines to the coast to ensure access to other markets.

A longer-term threat to the industry is that, as humanity moves beyond fossil fuels (and we will - we have to), we will be stuck pumping out a resource that no one wants anymore, not having invested any part of the boom's proceeds for the future. This threat I believe to be the bigger one and one of many reasons why I believe Tom is correct about our development of the industry being short-sighted.

In spite of the jobs the industry is creating for a few young people in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan, there is no way the industry can sustain all of the country's 10 million people between 18 and 44 years of age. Our exclusive focus on this industry has indeed been at the expense of industries that can provide quality sustained employment to the vast majority of us. Moreover, the environmental effects of the industry's activities are not being internalized, and this will be a major cost that will be borne by us in the future.

Oil and gas development in Canada is an issue of generational equity and must be addressed soon. Tom and the NDP (and perhaps the Greens) are the only ones with the courage to address this in an environment with very powerful interests opposing them.

Sun, 2014-02-16 08:19

#24

epaulo13

..we are under attack and have been for some time. one only needs to look to europe south or to the us to see how this is manifesting in the developed countries. our human, economic and democratic rights are and have been degraded and continue to move to a darker place. that began before harper came onto the scene.

..i agree with iyraste1313 that we have given away our electoral power through global deals and processes. now our governments are slaves to those deals. while the ndp may be better in power than the cons & libs and they may offer badly needed reforms they do not represent a solution to the problems we are facing. there is a need for us to organize, to join ourselves at a grassroots level to stop the theft of resources going on, stop and prevent the further colonial attacks on indigenous folk and together develop an alternate path that does not leave the corporations in charge. and maybe hope for our environment. i would argue that the first step is to support the various resistance already going on both physically and otherwise. this may well place the movements at odds with the ndp but that will need to be dealt with later. the resistance desperately needs our support now.

..i also agree with mmphosis that we have laid out on babble some major issues re the tar sands. these issues do not get addressed in any meaningful or democratic way and above all that needs to change. fighting this out in an election is nether meaningful or democratic. edit

Sun, 2014-02-16 09:43

#25

iyraste1313

I agree wholeheartedly that the way forward is to work with the resistance movements, but what is crucial is to develop our alternatives...only the Indigenous fringes so far are doing this, getting back to their hunting and gathering and fishing...what`s left of it all, also with the peasants trying to eke out a living in their patches of land..organics etc...but I fear that as long as they remain so individulaistically oriented they will fall prey to the controls of the corporate state...

but the NDP? better than the others...I think the opposite...the role of the NDP conscious or not is to suck the idealism of the fringes into useless campaigning for opportunists who may gain power to do what? Change the structure of capitalism? End the process of globalization? Build community and biorgional self reliance? Hardly! They are a trap! And we need a political alternative.

I tried once with the heady days of the greens, only to be thwarted by the opportunists such as the likes of Ms. May!

Sun, 2014-02-16 12:23

#26

NorthReport

Better late than never I suppose, but Canada is going to have to belly up to the bar at some point, hopefully before we are all toast.

Kerry calls climate change a weapon of mass destruction, derides skeptics

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, calling climate change perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction, on Sunday urged developing nations to do more to cut greenhouse-gas emissions as he derided climate-change skeptics at home and blamed big companies for hijacking the debate.

Kerry painted a picture of looming drought and famine, massive floods and deadly storms as a result of global warming, and he urged ordinary citizens in developing nations to speak out on the issue and demand more from their political leaders. He labeled those who denied the evidence of climate change as “shoddy scientists and extreme ideologues.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/kerry-calls-climate-cha...

Sun, 2014-02-16 13:06

#27

quizzical

mmphosis wrote:

> What happens to Canadians' economy when the tarsands go belly up?

"Economy" as in the global stock market? The TSE? Or "economy" as in local trade and exchange?

I think that there are very different perspectives, and many issues are overlooked.

Cost of extraction, and is there even a return on investment? In terms of energy and valuable materials put in (like clean drinking water), for energy output and materials lost (like clean drinking water), I think that the tarsands lose.

Economics, money. The new "science" of economics overlooks "externalities": it does not account for priceless ecology, drinking water, clean air, quality soil and the list goes on. The financing ignores the fact that Canada's fiat currency is money as debt created out of nothing with interest money (that doesn't exist) being owed on that debt money.

Subsidies. Over ten years ago, the price of gas at the pump in Iraq was about six cents a liter, and the price for gas sold in a small liter bottle near a refugee camp somewhere in Africa was more than $15. In Canada, non-renewable petrochemical resource extraction has been subsidized to the nines for as long as I can remember. The price at the pump does not show costs of war, death, destruction, and billions of dollars a year given by the Canadian government to large corporations in the tarsands.

Renewables. Where I live, we are struggling to free ourselves from the addiction to petrochemicals. Electric vehicles of various types are a popular means of transport. We have one local manufacturer. The large nearby city has companies that convert fleets of vehicles. Locally, people have gone off the grid using wind, solar, and some non-renewables. Our community as a whole is looking to solar, wind and tidal power generation. There are no subsidies for renewables, and upfront costs are often prohibitive, but people are changing their behaviours anyways. The price going up at the pump is good for the tarsands, but it also encourages us to change our ways and avoid the gas pump altogether.

The tarsands going belly up resolves many problems.

To the Last Drop: Canada's Dirty Oil Sands - Part 1 (youtube.com)

Sex, Drugs and Alcohol Stalk the Streets of Fort McMurray (oilsandstruth.org)

Climate Change: I don't want to talk about it

no pipeline, no tankers, no problem

heads up drugs alcohol and prostitution are everywhere not just in Ft Mac or other oil boom communties way to project a unbalanced perspective creating a negative light when there's enough bad things about the tar sands and AB's poor environmental standards to act on. you do yourself a discredit including a 2005 article.

and i don't think the tar sands developments are any different than the logging and coal mining camps of old which separated men from their families and normal life. the i primary issue for me is the destruction of families by employment exploitation.

and remember all canadians benefit from the huge amount of income taxes taken from oil patch workers.

Sun, 2014-02-16 13:20

#28

NorthReport

Just a bunch of Easterners winning about losing their throne of power, eh.

I'm no Harper fan, but it has been quite healthy for Canada overall to recently have had a prime minister from the West.

Sun, 2014-02-16 14:59

#29

wage zombie

quizzical wrote:

and remember all canadians benefit from the huge amount of income taxes taken from oil patch workers.

What is this referring to?

Sun, 2014-02-16 15:04

#30

quizzical

where would our federally funded social programs be if the oil patch in AB was not happening?

Sun, 2014-02-16 15:30

#31

voice of the damned

quizzical wrote:

heads up drugs alcohol and prostitution are everywhere not just in Ft Mac or other oil boom communties way to project a unbalanced perspective creating a negative light when there's enough bad things about the tar sands and AB's poor environmental standards to act on. you do yourself a discredit including a 2005 article.

and i don't think the tar sands developments are any different than the logging and coal mining camps of old which separated men from their families and normal life. the i primary issue for me is the destruction of families by employment exploitation.

And the article contains not-so-subtle digs at supposedly overpaid workers...

Big money makes for big problems in a city where the average age is 31 and the average income is $91,000.

...

"This town is awash in cocaine," says longtime Fort McMurrayite Darrell Payne, an autobody shop owner who has watched as friends struggled with drug addictions.

"People have more money than they know what to do with."

So, I guess, following this logic, the solution is to have lower wages for workers? I'm sure the Fraser Institute could get behind that.

I would probably agree with the guy who said that there is more cocaine in Fort MacMurray than in Lethbridge. Then again, there is probably a lot of cocaine on Bay Street as well, but no one is describing those guys as having too much money.