cannuck

When oil companies were complaining about the cost of double hull tankers (around Y2K), oil was selling for $10 = far below the cost of production. It costs a few dollars just to SHIP the stuff, so that was the reason for their resistance. Also, very low percentage of oil spills (far less than 10%) at sea cam from tankers. BUT, of course, a catastrophic failure was a big deal, so double hull it is today. The beneficiaries of oil and gas development are not just oil companies, but the consumers who depend upon the never ending stream of very cheap petroleum for them to waste at an astonishing rate. Someone said renewables are not and will never be able to provide base load. Well, let me give you a hint: when the non-renewables run out, renewables will be all that is left to provide that base load. So it would be really stupid not to develop them while we are busy piddling away the finite reserves of petroleum. There are two arguments as to what is needed to become sustainable: one is the incredible level of waste in our ultra-hedonistic lifestyle, and the other is the stupidity of unchecked population growth. Instead we bitch and moan about the cost of getting more crap to waste as if there were no tomorrow. The same people whining about the risks that are associated with producing the resources they so happily waste will be some of the first to protest if those resources are not available for their pleasure.

I am in agreement that this multicultural immigration thing has failed. We should make Canada into a melting pot with only one language. Question is which one? Cree, Inuktitut or Ojibway?? As to P. T....let me revise that to be politically correct....the subversive, dangerous Liberal leader who dictated 16 of the darkest years in Canadian history.... version of multi-culturalism: it is probably the ONLY thing in his reign of destruction with which I CAN agree. The advantage in business internationally as a Canadian vs. Yanks and Euro-weenies (ESPECIALLY Yanks) is that as a Canadian, I usually come into a situation with an attitude of trying to understand and co-exist with a host culture, vs. the US concept of considering them idiots because they don't want to be just like me.

Well, this should go down in history: I agree with Suzuki, SOME of our immigration policy is definitely trying to skim the cream of other countries' crops of professionals. What I can not possibly agree with is the idea that we should be doing anything BUT that in seeking immigrants. We do allow in vast numbers of people who, let's face it, are really not much of a contribution to our economy (unless you count gang warfare and drug trading as part of our economic model). THAT should stop dead in its tracks. I prefer to think that bringing in the right level of professional skill sets means we have a far better chance of developing our resource economy with less impact on the environment that just maintaining the status quo. Fresh blood, new ideas and new connections are very much part of that possibility. Also more educated and highly employed people tend to have far fewer children than...er..."lower class" families (you know, the ones that JT thinks will vote for the Drivel party) reducing the load per family and per dollar of economic activity on the environment over the next few generations.

A directorship is something that generally goes along as a right of a certain block of shares to appoint. The responsibility of the board is to represent shareholders, as they own the company. The notion that some...ANYoutside force should have the right and power to decide who, how, what, why or when a director of a private corporation is appointed or removed is ludicrous. The concept that seems to be lost on some here and definitely on the idiots on the Hill is that a private corporation is just that - PRIVATE. Even a publicly traded company is still someone's property. With the massive drift to the left - and specific lack of respect for private property - the concept of what I do, when, where, with whom and why with MY property is even lost on what laughably passes for government of the "right". It should be nobody else's damned business but the owner of the property in question. Now, if we were talking about shareholders' rights and particularly minority shareholders' rights, that is a very different story. The way that financial institutions have highjacked corporate governance is way out of control, and should indeed be the place where government regulates what people do with someone else's property and money.

Leave the oil in the ground? We get most of our oil from Venezuela?? Geez, what planet did I land on? As the OP and his link suggests, we live in a resource-driven economy. Always have, always will. Oil is a finite resource, so when the rest of the world runs out of it, there won't be any technological market that we can service with our oil. We would be idiotic in the EXTREME not to cash in on the resource that we have while everyone else in the world is becoming addicted to its waste...er, I meant USE. We do not buy any significant amount of oil from Venezuela, and we produce far, far more oil than Canada could ever need. Thing is, if we weren't exporting all of this oil, potash, uranium, nickel, gold, diamonds, etc. we really wouldn't have any internal need for "our" oil. What is very important to appreciate is that our largest oil deposit - that Athabasca Sands, is extremely capital and labour intensive to extract. That means instead of paying one pumper to check in on the well ever day or so for a few minutes, we need dozens of people using millions of dollars worth of equipment (much built in Canada) to extract that same amount of oil. What that really amounts to is a fair bit of value not "added" but "extracted" from every petro dollar that we receive for heavy oil exports. Canada has a lot of oil and gas, but the real problem is we can't get it to market. To put it into perspective: the Athabasca Sands alone represent a body of hydrocarbons that is either larger than everything in the Persian Gulf (based on some proven recovery values from 15 years ago) to larger than the rest of the world's reserves COMBINED (the gross amount of oil that is in place). The reservoir that is driving the ND economy to absolutely crazy levels (the Bakken shales) are routhly 30% in ND, 20% in MT and 50% in SK. Goes on, and on. The US has turned around its national decline curve and brought their traditional 10MM bbl/dy habit almost 7MM today vs. well under 5MM just two years ago of domestic production. That is wiping out the market for crude oil imports from Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, MENA - but has hardly put a dent in the supply from the blue-eyed sheiks of AB. Only the politics of pipelines is screwing that up. Speaking of which: it is not just the Dummycrats in Yankee land that are making a mockery out of pipeline utilities development. We have to remember that our recent largess of granting vast tracts of land and resources to Aboriginals pretty much deadlocks ANY pipeline being built to the West Coast through a new route.

Did not have time to read all pages, but from skimming, I don't think anyone hit the key to what would be needed to make representation truly by population (and OF the people) - elimination of political parties. Voters in North America, and I expect around the world have been able to see through how rule-by-special-interest is enabled by partisanship and the resulting institutions of political parties. You need to spend some time around politics in India to see openly what really goes on behind closed doors in our more "enlightened" society. In my perfect world, the basic rule of government would be to do what I was told by Sir Roger Douglas when I asked him how he could do such "Conservative" things as he had to do to save his country's economy with the fact he was Minister in a Labour government - "we simply removed privilege". That is the very opposite of what the whole purpose of political parties is - to provide a platform for dispensing special privilege.

new to the site, late to the thread, so no way to respond to 13 pages except to say that posts 108-112 come close to reality. To suggest Chinese enjoy more freedoms than Westerners is ludicrous in the extreme. My best friend and business partner when in employ of a giant Chinese state-owned multi-national could not travel freely for business without express permission of government ON APPLICATION even after he rose to be the vice-chair of international business. Ten years later, things are better, but don't even begin to try to tell me there are any reasonable level of personal freedoms or human rights comparable to what we experience. What you ARE free to do is pollute the countryside, poison people around the world and lie about any document, your income, etc. Unless you become a pain in the arse to someone in the Party or some level of government, you really are pretty much alone to do as you please. China HAS all kinds of laws protecting environment, consumers, etc. but they are seldom ever enforced unless to serve agendae of party or bureaucrats. The reason you pay more for imported goods than domestic equivalent is that Chinese KNOW that what something appears to be is not what it might be in fact. The subject of language was briefly broached: due to the restrictions on travel for decades, very few people in China speak or understand many of the dialects outside of their home. You can learn the words, but unless you know the regional dialect and on top of that are sufficiently familiar with the culture to understand context, you have very little idea of what you are saying and what is being said. HUGE blocks of people do speak Mandarin and/or Cantonese, but... People in China are totally distrusting in government - for good reason. It is the same Communist party today from which Chairman Mao managed to starve as many as 100,000,000 people by nationalizing all farm land. Made the Holucost look like a small car crash. China's turnaround came with the wisdom of the Four Pillars of Modern Reform - courtesy of Deng's European exposure and education. HOWEVER: to think this is a capitalist society and system is extremely wrong. This is institutionalized exploitation of the strengths and weaknesses of Capitalism as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their own people and situation in a centrally planned campaign that would make Marx blush. Even the adaptation of technology is not happenstance (or internally developed), it occurs due to massive monitoring of worldwide cyber communications and data storage in a State sponsored wave of cyber-terrorism and cyber-theft beyond your wildest imagination. Now, all of that being said: if you ask a citizen if they are better off now than 10 and 20 years ago, they would ask if you are crazy, of course they are. If you ask them if they expect to be better off in another 10 or 20 years, they will reply "of course". So, while they don't have Western standards of living and freedom, what you see happening is simply the very quickly evolving "catch up" to the rest of the world that is inevitable. China (and even to the understanding of Chinese leaders) can no longer stand still, nor will her people. And that's a good thing. Should we sanction them for their extremely one-sided trade practices? No, not IMHO. HOWEVER: we really MUST protect our consumers from to total lack of truth and integrity of Chinese manufactured and exported products. THAT is fair ball by our rules.

Do I think MJ should be legal? Consumption: yes, Cultivation and distribution: exactly as per alcohol, but I don't believe government has any business being IN business, be it distributing booze, other drugs or sick care.

Uh...religion IS a mental health issue.

Absolutely, here or anywhere else in the world. Europeans drive intelligent vehicles because fuel is double what it is in Canada. When the last price collapse of crude oil put gasoline down to a buck, Yanks went hog wild buying SUVs and pickups (also some driven by tax break for big pig commercial vehicles that forced most corporate buyers who would have sent someone down the road in a small car to put them in a Suburban or one ton truck.) This is the main problem for sustainability when oil prices and fuel prices fall. We start (or make that CONTINUE) doing really stupid things. Low oil prices make alternatives either non-viable, or dependent upon tax concessions or subsidies.

gasoline is a consumer product, and is very volatile in pricing. NOTHING in the tanks or distribution system is going to be replaced in minutes, so the price is moving based upon some pre-emptive moves by the distribution chain. For gasoline, it is all about market share - without getting so aggressive so as to pi$$ off your competitor and start a price war. That decision is seldom, if EVER made at the station level, because for either an independent or franchise, the margins are so slim that they just don't have the kind of room to play. Can't give you the RUG prices (don't know, don't care), but for diesel, you can buy it by the shipload for about $0.72 Cdn a litre, a few cents more for ULSD, so let's say $0.75. BUT: that litre is in a tank in Rotterdam (or eslewhere). Crude oil (WTI) is about $0.50 Cdn a litre. So, getting it to the refinery, refining it, and getting it into a major distribution hub happens for about $0.25/litre. I can tell you that there is virtually NO profit from merchant refining in North American market - only really works if you are processing your own feedstock. From what I have seen, Canadian refiners will sell for about the same price as Platt's in Rotterdam, so let's assume it is in tanks in Edmonton at that price. The total fuel taxes in SK (where I live) are around $0.38/litre, so we are now at $1.13, and the wholesaler has to buy it, transport it to market and then the retailer has to make his money all on about $0.07 (against current $1.20 price). This is why I am telling you that there just isn't a lot to play with at the end of the downstream chain when it comes to supply/demand. Upstream, the price of crude oil is in the hands of the banks, not oil companies. Even though most of the oil produced is NOT traded on commodities exchanges, the prices are imposed upon the industry by financial institutions, not some industry controlled marketing pool. This is due to OUR deference to Casino Capitalism as the economy of the world today, rather than the actual business of doing business on Main Street (where even Big Oil once played). Imagine how a small, independent US oil producer who has to pick up the crumbs under the table of the majors and has a genuine cost of production of around $70 a bbl (normal for mature fields in secondary recovery) when "his" VP strokes a deal with Saudi that will slash the value of a barrel to $80 or less (which means well under $70 at the wellhead)???? BTW: at the height of demand for crude in general, the lack of transportation in the West meant that all of the new production was discounted about 50% at the wellhead. That published WCS price is NOT what the producers all got. I guess what I am trying to say is that the oil business is very, very complex. Pricing is dependent upon all kinds of factors that have very little to do with market economics. For example: 15 years ago, WTI was $10US, and RUG in US sold for $1. at 10:1 ratio. Today, when crude oil was $100, Yankee doodle dandies were wallowing down the Beltway in their SUVs at over $4 a gallon, a 25:1 ratio. Imagine Joe consumer if he was grossing 40% his paycheque today vs. 1999? Sorry to barge in here with nothing but some cold hard facts, but when someone brought this thread to my attention, thought it might be interesting to join a Canadian political site (haven't found many and US ones are just about the Uniparty inhouse bickering)