cannuck

That is a valid question. The answer is: "politics" = but not so much regional as on a global scale. There is no question that climate is changing - as it has done for billions of years - but there is an opportunity for an economically competitive advantage by replacing nuclear fears with the carbon bugaboo. It was so easy as media has been (often correctly) exposing the horrible track record on environmental damage of the oil production and petrochem industry so the dirty work (sorry for the pun) was mostly done. Once the Euroweenie realized they had used up their easy oil and uncle Vlad had them by the balls to keep on keeping on it was an easy play to demonize the industries they were beholden to and move the market into a new space where there was no massive advantage to oil producing competitive nations. Once left leaning and thoughtless governments started playing off the UN led book and primed the "climate science" pump with a bit of cash, every basket weaving student could switch from inclusive studies to the even more lucrative "climate science" field with ultra low barriers of entry. What the truly ignorant "climate scientists" completely miss is that the path to sustainability can only come by doing LESS of what is causing our very real sustainability crisis, not devising more elaborate, more costly and more polluting ways to do more of what is the real problem. No question that the wrong approach is "drill baby drill" but anyone with a half a brain could easily realize the using massive amounts of immature and inappropriate technology to flood our streets and landfills with un-recyclable wind generator blades to charge incredibly polluting and not yet recyclable toxic batteries is equally inept. What is far, far worse is the shifting our attention to the so easy target of carbon from Big Oil means we are giving a pass to the plastic industries that are poisoning the very biota that extracts and fixes carbon and releases the oxygen that feed the start of the entire food chain and provide us with the oxygen we breathe. THAT is where our very existence will very soon come to an end.

It's not unique to USA as Canada and the rest of the world have as much addiction to alcohol and other drugs - a cultural acceptance that goes back centuries. It is a responsibility to each and ever nation and person. Countries try to limit some of their addictions by making it illegal to import and trade in such substances - and the US has indeed done that. Where they have failed is in securing their borders - and we have been complicit in providing a welcome and unimpeded road for entry of people and drugs into their country. They have every right to do whatever they think is appropriate to stem this flow, and that is what they seem to think they are doing.

I for one am delighted to see Trump's tariffs. To start with: he is responsible for the US economy, not ours. We have been too lazy, stupid, greedy and/or ignorant to revert from a diverse manufacturing economy (70 years ago) to hewers of wood and drawers of water (and oil) that we sell with no value added into the US economy. Outside of the US auto industry in ON, we have let our industries go from independent to branch plant to closed. Instead of investing in Main Street we have put our meager money and trust in Bay Street as Wall Street had instructed. I am insulted daily when I leave the counter of my primary industrial supplier when the person on the other side bids me farewell with "thank you for buying Canadian", and I have to remind him that almost everything in their massive catalogue was made in China, USA or Mexico, not Canada. Instead of developing an economy that exploits our resource wealth to fund value added businesses within our borders, Instead of promoting Canadian entrepreneurs to create wealth we instead scrape the very bottom of the international barrier and bring in millions of people who have absolutely no other purpose in life except to provide cheap labour to those who import products and services that prey upon Canadian consumers. Those same NACs are here because they know they can bring over the rest of their family to enjoy a free ride on our sick care and social services or play the games to exploit their student visa status to enter the USA. The truly ignorant and arrogant new US President is doing us a potentially great service if it will make us look at where we came from, where we are and where we are going as a result of being passive dolts along for the ride.

Evert time government decides to do something...A.NYTHING to choose winners and losers in the business world you can count on two guaranteed things: they will totally f*ck up anything they touch and the kickbacks will be at least 10% of what flows out of our bank....oops, our grandchildrens' tax accounts.

Pipeline intrusion detection is a fiber optic cable "listening" to sound. It is probably more in line with what submariners do than any other process. At a military max performance level, I expect they could clearly hear footsteps and many more things and identify what and maybe who the signature fit. When you say "nukes" I assume you mean dirty bombs, but there are (at least where when my Father instructed on them) battlefield nukes that could indeed fit in a man sized tunnel. Let's hope they never get hold of such a thing.

Have worked a bit with pipeline intrusion detection technology. From 50km away, the good stuff can locate source of noise within a couple of meters and even identify the type and size of approaching vehicles/equipment and then applied force of the intruders's ground engagement tool. Hamas/Hez/Iran could indeed detonate a small nuke on/within their borders but I can tell you with certainty that Israel excells at building and using this technology (behind only UK)

At 10:1 or so for what could be mostly Hamas operatives or combatants, the offset for Israeli hostages is not a great deal. Once more: Hamas celebrating their victory.

The Athabasca Oil Sands are hardly unique. There are many other "uncoventional reserves" with similar density and sulphur levels all over the planet. ALL of these sell for a considerable discount from reference crudes. There is no one price for "oil", just an industry agreed reference for each production region. What is different very about the Athabasca deposit (it stretches darn near to MB) is that if you call it "oil" it is the largest contiguous reservoir in the world - possibly greater than the rest of the world's petroleum hydrocarbon reserves combined. Somewhat unique is that significant proportion of the deposits are close enough to the surface around the Ft. McMurray - Fort McKay region to be mined in open pits. What is missing so far for the MUCH larger deeper portion is a practical and sustainable way to get it out of the groiund. In the early days there was even thoughts of using a small thermonuclear device to make a glass lined (from melted sand) hot pocket that could be pumped. That one didn't go ahead...obviously. Where "we" as a country, province and industry have genuinely screwed up is allowing heavy oil to be shipped by rail (as "ralibit" and pipeline (as "dillbit"), As I believe I mentioned earlier, we should allow export only of synthetic crude ("syncrde) that can not only go into a pipeline but can be fed to pretty much any "light oil" refinery. THEN we get maximum value from the resource due to value added.

Hey, this is a family website. Don't say such things.

This is correct. However: it is not just about getting AB Bitumen to tidewater, it is about taking dilbit off of incredibly dangerous rail and moving it far more safely. If anyone actually gave a flying purple f*** about the environmental impact they would make it illegal to ship dilbit (dilluted bitumen with very difficult characteristics if spilled) and do a full step of value added by upgrading to synthetic crude (as does Syncrude, GCOS/Suncor, CNRL and Shell Scotford) producing a much safer and easier product to ship that is ideal feedstock for conventional refineries.

Pretty sure that was all budgeted in the $8Bn Kinder Morgan would have spent. It is not their first pipeline. Sadly few readers could even begin to imagine how corrupt Ottawa is - regardless of what party is in power.

This thread should have been titled: "The Hamas Resupply Agreement". The aid that has been flowing daily into Gaza was mostly hijacked by Hamas and surplus sold to Gazans at extremely high cost. The UN has been proven totally incompetent in delivering aid to Gazans in need and upping the flow to 600 trucks a day means that weapons and munitions will be flowing in at a stunning rate. After all, the thousand or so combatants being released will need supplies, won't they?

Oh, Grasshopper, I have to take you to task...again. They are 100% competent at executing their actual plans. Do you have an idea how much porkfat drips out of a barrel overrunning by $20++ BILLION???? There are chiefs and band counsellors smiling all of the way to their offshore bank accounts with all of the generosity we taxpayers used to buy their obligations to the LPC.

You have no idea just how much the ROC is enslaved by the Feds to pander to Quebec. It goes miles beyond any "special carvout" - it is a blatant abuse of the rrights and privileges of every level of government in the whole country.

There was a Western separatist movement, and with the disaster inflicted upon us by the East putting the Little Turd in power for 10 years it may well rejuvenate. Problem is: without AB/SK/MB energy there is no way Ottawa could afford Quebec.

She willingly and actively participated in the wanton destruction of Canadian culture and economic well being, ran up an unsustainable debt on our grandchildrens' backs and stood proudly beside an arrogant fool who made Canada the laughing stock within global diplomacy for 10 years. Her intellectual acuity has already been demonstrated.

while I certainly won't have a dog in this race, I do think Christi Freespend really deserves the job to be PM for a day. She earned that right by standing up to the Little Turd. Worth mentioning: while Jughead propped up his government until his pension was fully vested he put us in a position of having no leadership and no effective government going into a most critical phase of Can/USA relations. His personal greed also could result in someone who was not even elected or possibly has never actually run for office becoming PM.

It not only exists, it is flourishing with the unholy alliance between Wall Street and the Beltway. IMHO: biggest problem is Trump is but one aligator in that swamp...you know - the one he was going to drain in his first term. He has a back room, shared with much of the Uniparty and THAT is who/what runs the show. At least Bessent is one (small) step removed from Goldman Sucks.

there was a flagpole mounted in trailer hitch receiver of the pickup truck. The flag was black but we couldn't make out what was on the background. Could well be daish.

Don't care what anyone chooses to call me. I have NOT made a speculative transaction of any kind in probably 30 years. The only system I participate in depends on private equity, not publicly traded equities. I profit from capitalism - that is severely compromised and damaged by the Casino Capitalists who literally dictate to governments around the world as to what will be financial legislation, regulation and enforcement. It should be painfully obvious when the endless string of Goldman Sucks top execs went from just being secretary of treasury to inciting "too big to fail". If you ever care to actually learn some of this stuff, you need to go back to the "Bank Holidays" when the strategies were put in place. They played out in 2008/9 when instead of being punished as they were for their treachery in 1929/33 they were handsomely rewarded (by themselves). What you seem to fail to understand is that financial legislation, regulation and enforcement is NOT a partisan thing. Bankers/financier are simply greedy, manipulative opportunists and will buy their way into whatever partisan or other situation that will allow them to continue on their own path. Another thing: NO form of government pr political orientation has a monopoly on good government, good legislation, good regulation or fair and honest enforcement. There are equally as many pure scumbags distributed throughout the US and Canadian Uniparties

You seem to have a complete lack of ability to read carefully. I said UP TO start of production. Also, me investing a hun in MY business is not speculative, it is capitalism. YOU gambling on and banks manipulating the value of equities or far worse synthetic instruments is what I refer to as Casino Capitalism as it has literally NOTHING to do with my balance sheet. Since I finance 5 companies in 3 countries, answer to 700 shareholders in one and have been deeply involved in what moves prices of a NASDAQ traded company as well as an executive of some obviously very conservative political parties I don't think anyone with a half a brain would call me a "lefty" - unless of course they made their livelihood of participating the the financial scams of Casino Capitalism that suck the very life out of the real economy.

I could go on to the blatantly obvious error in every one of your points, but you seem to have no interest in understanding how economies actually work, so I will keep it down to one. Tesla is indeed making cars, and, if you can believe their highly questionable accounting making some profit. BUT that is nickles and dimes to the money made on speculative gain on startup. The "market value" of Tesla was greater than all of the Big Three combined - against a negative book value. The profits from pure speculation is in the THOUSANDS of times book value. And that to the point of profitability created ZERO weath. Same goes for all of the other "Casino is good" bullshit.

That is not exactly true. Wealth distribution is NOT wealth creation. You can only create wealth by adding value to a resource or performing a service in support of same. We long ago went down Wall Street's path and switched our "economy" to one that rewards the least productive among us the most - generally through not just allowing, but PROMOTING speculative gain - a function that produces no wealth but does increase the money supply. That is purely inflationary, so the benefits enjoyed by the speculators are distinctly at the expense of the general population. Everyone may see their numbers go up, but the switch from a productive economy to a speculative on can cost a lot more in purchasing power. If you need a simple example: tell me how an average family is going to afford a single unit dwelling in Toronto or Vancouver. We worship speculation at the cost of productivity and sustainability. Coming out of the '30s the economies of Canada and USA were built by entrepreneurs, businessmen and industrialists by creating wealth. Easy to do when our global competitors were being bombed into rubble - and we were making the weapons to do so. Canada has always profited from exploitation of our massive resource base, but we also devoted our -30s to '60s economy to productive value added business. Sadly: the Eastern stranglehold on power and control latched onto building cars mostly in Ontario (at the start of NAFTA 70% if all trade between the largest trading partners on the planet - Can and USA - had developed under the Auto Pact (where Canada was a clear winner). It also seized on the idea of giving unbelievable and unsustainable benefits to Quebec - at the expense of many, many other businesses in ROC that would not even get the opportunity to compete. The trouble comes when you have to figure out where the investment capital needed by Main Street (where virtually ALL wealth is created) has gone we see that it is all on Bay Street and Wall Street where speculative gains can be produced at 10x, 100x or even 1000x market value by playing speculative games. How does a real business able to at best produce a 10% dividend compete with sugar plum fairy promises of orders of magnitude gains from money used in Casino Capitalism? By funding finance with bets on speculative gain we have defunded the entire mechanisms of the economy that creates all wealth. Worth noting: this is NOT something that either end of the partisan spectrum champions in opposition to the other - finance and banks now run the economies of both countries, not business and sure as Hell not some informed political movement.

Sorry not to have mentioned this in my earlier reply to your post: You need to know the history of what the government and courts have done and continue to do to citizens who don't toe the Uniparty line (dictated by institutions). Find out what happened to Andy McMecen when he LEGALLY defied the authority of the Canadian Wheat Board. The government and courts assaulted his farm, his income, his financial property and courts adjudicated that even though he was charged with a crime (taking his own truck) when NO illegal act had been committed (clearly stated in Justice Ross Whimmer's summary) and put him in jail - visiting daily to tell him he could be released as soon as he disavowed his relationship with the group "Farmers for Justice". ALL of this quickly forgotten part of our history clearly violates anything and almost everything in the 1960 bill of rights and 1982 so-called "Charter of Freedoms and Rights". The truckers' fates were simply too loud and visible to be forgotten, but the precedent that WE HAVE NO SUCH FREEDOM AND RIGHTS was clearly demonstrated by Ralph Goodale's assault on Andy's rights, freedoms and property (the latter carefully left out of Big Turd's declaration) to attempt to keep the CWB alive and deny Western farmers of their rights to buy, grow and sell their own crops.

You said no such thing, I provided you with a historical fact that there has been. Secondly: if we actually HAD any kind of personal rights and freedoms there is no way our so-called "government" could have done what they did to the protesters who didn't to the woke line. The laughable "charter" written by the Big Turd and Roy Romanow specifically avoided protection of your property - and Little Turd showed us why.