Accountability Now

This is the part that drives me crazy. Natives claim they are the wards of the environment which is why they stand up to these oil companies and block roads. In the end, its all about money. The only green they care about is the money.

That sounds interesting. Do you have a link that shows the lakes/river removed and their relation to the riding?

Crap. I was sure that I posted an edit explaining this but apparently I didn't save it. The original site from where I got GDP values was the Trading Economics (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp) and it has the years posted in a deceiving manner. If you look at the site, you will see the years on the x axis are a year later than what they should be. I think they are showing it as the start of the next year rather than the end of the previous year. So when they say it's 2009, it was actually referring to 2008. Ultimately I was trying to show the change in GDPs pre-recession, recession and post recession which is why I chose 2009-2011 when it should have been 2008-2010. Even though I had the years labelled incorrectly, the data and the results remain the same.

I would really like it if you could rewrite this in English as I am not fluent in jibberish. My assumption above has nothing to do with my final claim about the effect of a changing GDP on GERD. I only mentioned it as I was isolating the GDP variable, showing that a negative change in GDP will have a postive change GERD...."assuming the GERD funding (R&D) remain constant". If that assumption is false, then any country putting in more funding with a decreasing GDP will see a much larger increase in GERD. Any country putting in less funding is off setting the drop in GERD and will most likely stay the same or not see a major change. Either way, its too their benefit when trying to climb the ol' GERD ladder. I already answered this. The major drop happened after 2008. Why look at 2006 when its not in the equation. Glad you found it interesting though. However I will change it up to measure from 2008 to 2011 to make you feel better....ok? Why on earth would you think that PPP would be more appropriate? Is that because you like being wrong? You might want to check the glosssary where it says they base GDP on current and constant prices. So which one of these two is it for the GERD intensity? Well....if we look back to the data source used, they clearly show Canada calculates its GERD Intesity based on GDP - Current Dollars in Local Currency....not PPP or Current Prices USD. This of course makes sense as GERD Intesity is a percentage, which means the units must be equal and cancel out. If the funding was spent in local currency in current dollars, then the GDP must be expressed that way. Measuring in USD is a way to compare GDPs of two or more countries in a given year but not over multiple years as we are doing. Again....don't believe me on this. The proof is in the pudding with the pudding being Table 1-1 below. You just need to compare the GDPs being used to the IMF or World Bank and you will see they are the GDP - Current prices in local currency. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/88-221-x/88-221-x2013001-eng.pdf As for me not providing the data.....do I really need to hold your hand on this??? I provided the link to where all the data could be found by simply a push of the button. But since its clear that I do need to hold your hand, I will provide you with the CORRECT data (unlike your GDP data) for the 7 countries before Canada and the 6 Countries after. I have removed New Zealand because their GERD data is only for 2005, 2007, 2009 which does match up with the other countries milestones and thus doesn't make for an accurate comparison. Here is a table with data from the World Bank, showing the GDPs for each country by year based on current prices with that countries currency. GDP info can be found at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CN GERD Ratios (Intensity) can be found at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/gross-domestic-expenditure-on-r-d_2075843x-table1 In this table, I have sorted the data in descending order based on % GDP change (2008-2011)....with 2008 and 2011 being used as the milestones. As you will see, I have highlighted Australia, Singapore, Luxembourg and Canada as all four of these countries had double digit increases in GDP from 2008-2011. These four countries also showed significant drops in their GERD Intensity. The actual GERD Intensity numbers weren't available from the OECD library, but the previous Figure 3-2 allows one to eyeball that a signifcant drop occurred. As I have been saying, the change in GDP can't be discounted from the equation. You see it in the 2008 to 2011 numbers but its even more prevalent in the 2008-2010 numbers. (I would suggest that this may be important as most funding allocation for a given year is acutally done in the previous year. As such when a country sees its GDP is lowering, it may in turn fund less for the next year.). In the 2008-2010 numbers, all four of the yellow shaded countries showed POSITIVE changes in GDP. The non-yellow countries showed very minor increases or NEGATIVE changed in GDP with the only exception being Belgium. Belgium showed a significant increase in GDP and GERD intensity. Good work Belgium! You now have something else to be proud of in addition to your fine chocolate. The bottomline is that the initial State of the Nation report is a great tool to measure Canada against other countries and to try and improve our place in the world. However, the results should be taken with a grain of salt based on the changing GDP values due to the recession. Yes...Canada's overall GERD declined from 2008, however the point that you keep ignoring or just keep stumbling on is the fact that the Federal government funding for GERD has actually increased (as per Table 1-2 below). That funding has gone up from 5.709B in 2008 to 6.123B in 2011 (7.3%). The reason for the decreases is largely due to the decrease in Business Enterprise funding (-3%). Now...-3% may not seem that large but when 50% of your funding comes from this one area, then a 3% drop is more significant than a 7% gain from the Feds. Bottomline is that the OP and your continued nattering about Harper 'stifiling' innovation is completely foolish and clearly shows your logic (or lack there of) is highly influenced by your distaste of the CPC. By the way....have you decided on who you're voting for in 2015. I saw that you never did answer the other MLW members when they asked you which party you side with. Easy to throw the peanuts from the cheap seats... http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/88-221-x/88-221-x2013001-eng.pdf

I just read your link to support your claim that a lot more people oppose the oil sands than we think. You do realize this "sold out" crowd is taking place in a 1800 seat facility!!! Lol! Oh no....1800 people are either against it or like Neil Young enough to support his cause. This is too funny. You get more people to a junior hockey game in Calgary than this! Lol!

Not caring about the oil sands is not the same thing as opposing them.

I'm sure some of them are buying tickets for that reason. The vast majority are fans of Neil Young and would go see him regardless of what he's chirping about

It's not hard to find 15-20,000 people who don't know or care about his oil sands comments.

It's not broad at all. It's fundamental math, most of these countries stayed close to their previous GERD numbers or increased slightly. We know that all of these countries had decreasing GDPs. By the given GERD formula, these countries either decreased their funding (to remain at the same Gerd level) or left it the same ( and saw and increase). As for your caveat that you are so desperately clinging to....have another look at the "considerations" again. They said that any considerations of the size of GDP meaning it doesn't matter that China's GDP is a thousand times larger than say Estonia. In both cases the formula will work. What it does not say, is that these considerations don't take into account rapidly changing GDP which we saw in 2009-2011. This formula works when the GDPs are steady or somewhat steady. And as per my comment above, the GDPs of all nations were steadily increasing up to 2009....thus the real focus is on the time after that. Furthermore, the drop from 16th place (2006) to 17th place (2008) is not front page material. In fact most would pass it off as statistical deviation. The real concern comes in with the big drop to 23rd place. As such we focus on that area. I got my GDP numbers from http://www.tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp They have a number of GDP variables. I stuck with GDP.

I took a better look at the seven countries ahead of Canada and the seven countries behind Canada and found this to be very true. Prior to 2009, every country had steadily increasing GDPs. However of the 15 countries, 7 countries had declining GDPs from 2009-2011 thus making their 2011 GERD better assuming they put the same amount in. 3 countries had a massive decrease in 2010 and then a minor recovery in 2011 but NOT a recovery past their 2009 levels. In the end, any country that showed a decreasing GDP from 2009 to 2011 either stayed at the same GERD intensity or increased. In total there were 10 of these countries. There were only three countries that had a drop from 2009 and then a large enough recovery in 2011 to have the GDP be stronger than the 2009 number. Those countries were Australia, Singapore and Canada. If you look at the graph waldo provided, Australia showed a minor drop from their 2008 GERD but Singapore and Canada showed MAJOR drops...Singapore being even worse than Canada. In the end, any country that showed an increasing GDP from 2009 to 2011 all showed decreasing GERD intensities. The only country that was a complete anomoly in the group of 15 was China as their GDP has continuously grown in the past five years. Again...easy to determine your path if the targets aren't moving.

Look....I can repost too It's a good thing I wasn't comparing the size of the GDPs for each country, I was comparing the amount of change in GDP for each.

It's a good thing I wasn't comparing the size of the GDPs for each country, I was comparing the amount of change in GDP for each. If the government is supposed to match funding to GDP then it helps if it's not a moving target. As I showed, the countries that had large changes in GDP showed decreases in GERD. Those with smaller changes showed no change or even increases. It is interesting to note the change in some countries GDP alone was multiple times larger than other countries entire GDP.

Exactly. 2010 GDP dropped so no more funds were put in for 2011. Thus lower GERD 2011. Now you're getting it waldo.

I stated that I agreed with the fact that the funding did not keep pace. See below. Having said that, our GDP took an erratic downward turn in 2010 and then shot up in 2011/2012. Funding increased from 2006 and took a slight decrease from 2008 most likely due to this dip. If this report would have used 2010 numbers then our GERD would have been much better. Unfortunately, the GDP shot up again in 2011 making it not the case. That's quite the moving target if one is in fact supposed to follow GDP. As you can see, waldo continues to cherry pick above by pointing out a decrease in one area of funding rather than the entire R&D area that he originally posted. Moreso, like most Harper bashers, he thinks that anything bad is Harper's fault even if it has nothing to do with him. The formula for GERD is not a simiple input output equation as the volatiliy of the GDP has a lot to do with it. Under Harper, the total R&D did go up....that is clear. Having said that....I still haven't got a response on why the Liberals didn't kick in more funds on an absolute level when they had all that surplus money.

Lol. Let me explain how formulas work waldo. The GERD intensity is directly proportional to the funding amount and indirectly proportional to the GDP. So...countries can increase their GERD Intensity by either increasing their funding or having their GDP decrease while keeping the other variable constant. Having an increase in GERD doesn't automatically mean that country is doing more. In reality it is a combination of both. Even with the recession, most countries on this list increased their GDP from 2006 to 2011 however the rate % increase in some cases was not the same. The countries who appear to have a decrease in GERD had fairly high GDP increases (Canada - 60%, Singapore - 100%, Australia- 100%, Luxemburg - 60%) The countries who appear to have increased their GERD had lower GDP increases (Estonia - 35%, Slovenia - 31%, Netherlands - 31% and Czech Rep- 46%). Countries like Belgium who had a 51% increase in GDP appeared to remain constant in their GERD intensity. Based on this, it appear that the change in GDP does play a significant role in this equation. I will agree with waldo that "Canada" (not Harper) did not kick in the additional funds required to maintain or increase its GERD intensity based on our rising GDP however that again is related to the large portion of our funding coming from business and the subsequent drop off in that area. Bottomline is that Harper did NOT decrease any funding as suggested. If anything it was increased. As such any further arguements should be made based on what "Canada" should do....not Harper.

Perfect. Thanks for proving my point. Total funding has gone up but Funding as a percentage of GDP has gone down. Can't blame Harper for having large increase in GDP....but I'm sure you would.

Here....I'll make it easy on you. Federal funding, as per your study, is shown below. It was around 4.5B when Harper took over from Martin. Its now just under 6B. Of course, this increased funding came through tough recession times which leads me to believe why didn't the Liberals cough up more bucks with all those surpluses. I guess they really define "stifle".

There are of course federal corprate taxes from the businesses and individual income taxes that directly or indirectly earn their money in the oil sands. And of course if the East West line goes then we'll see the oil sands creating even more jobs in the East. But that doesn't count right? Or how about this little ditty from the study that your buddy waldo just posted from the STIC. http://www.stic-csti.ca/eic/site/stic-csti.nsf/vwapj/StateOfTheNation2012-may16-eng.pdf/$file/StateOfTheNation2012-may16-eng.pdf Eight times higher. that over all business. The next closest is Utilities which is only three times higher. If that isn't enough to convince you then perhaps this article titled: Alberta Oilsands: A Driving Force Behind Canada's Economy For Next http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/11/16/alberta-oilsands-a-driving-force-behind-canadas-economy_n_2146612.html

. waldo, on 14 Jan 2014 - 1:07 PM, said: Wait a second. You are going to use a report from the STIC to make the claim that Harper has discouraged innovation? Do you know who created the STIC in 2007.....yup.....the Harper government. So the group that Harper created specifically to encourage innovation finds five areas where Canada can improve and you equate that to Harper himself discouraging it. Does your hypocracy have no end? waldo, on 14 Jan 2014 - 1:07 PM, said: I see you took this from the summary table on Page 18. Perhaps if you would have looked at the actual funding amounts over the two respective periods (2006 to 2011), you would notice that the Federal Goverments portion actually increased from 5.2B to 5.8B. The only differnce is that the Canadian ecomony did remarkably well as the GDP actually increased in this time frame which I trust other countries can't say the same. Overall, the increase in federal funding couldn't be matched by the increase in GDP thus reducing this percentage from 2% to 1.74%. So I guess its Harpers fault that the GDP rose....right? Of course you also seem to ignore that the largest funder to Canada's GERD is in fact Business itself as it provides 3x the funding to this equation compared to the Feds. The fact that their contributions to funding decreased over these periods is no suprise due to the recession. Now if you want to compare Harper to say past Liberal governments, then lets look at Figure 3-3 on page 29 which shows the historical federal funding for R&D and see it has steadily increased from the Liberals. Of course, look again at the historical business funding and you will see increases right until 2008 and then a major drop which brings down the toal GERD. waldo, on 14 Jan 2014 - 1:07 PM, said: The same summary table shows that direct funding increased from 0.02% to 0.03% where as indirect funding remained the same. Now you do realize that having a higher indirect support bracket means that industry (largely oil and gas) are putting some skin into the game. If you change it to direct, then the funds will most likely be appropriated to the industries per GDP which will then largely go to oil and gas. I know how much you complain about subsidies for oil and gas....so how would you like that scenario. At least the indirect method keeps the business with some risk. waldo, on 14 Jan 2014 - 1:07 PM, said: This is a measure of businesses and how they are investing in R&D....not the Federal government. Please explain how Harper or any prime minister has any control over this one. Again...did you actually expect businesses to increase their exepditures on R&D during the recession. Yikes. The report (which again was created by Harper's committee) is an excellent tool to track progress and point out areas that need improvement. The fact that Harper set up such a committee is another sign of his experience and leadership abilities.

Apparently you don't know what royalties are? Just a hint....they help you pay less tax.

I agree with you. Most anti-warming people are right of center. That's why I thought this one was quite ironic as WT is a full fledged lefty.

Here is what Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall had to say on this. http://www.leaderpost.com/Rocker+Neil+Young+oilsands+comments+missing+facts+Saskatchewan+premier+Brad+Wall/9390775/story.html

Nice try Michael. Why else would did you bring up the partisan ties?

Why is a falling dollar going to hurt our energy sector? We sell oil in USD.

Why do you assume that he is right of center? In fact he has outright stated he is NDP. Pretty foolish assumption on your part Michael which just shows your partisan ties.