Environment, oilsands

[Wild Bill]

What of the possibility of automated production? We have lots of available production facilities not being used anymore. We have lots of folks on welfare and EI that can be trained and offered positions in new productive efforts. Why don't we head down a new path and carve a trial for others to follow? Why do we want to sit in the weeds and watch it all go away while doing nothing about it?

Production in electronics manufacturing has been the norm since the early 80's. All the countries that are players have it at essentially the same level. When everybody has something then that removes it as a competitive advantage.

I'm hearing a lot of ideas but I grew up IN that industry and nobody seems to understand the details. Either they're giving inappropriate suggestions or ones that have been tried and failed before.

As for carving out a new path, I submit that the answers will have to be at the political level. The extra costs here in Canada are just too great for a company to overcome on their own. RIM has managed so far by being very efficient and having patent protections on exclusive products. They don't just sell BlackBerries. They sell the entire BlackBerry network! They got there "firstest with the mostest" but it's a scary ride on a hurtling toboggan! Patents eventually expire and you always have to keep innovating. I admire RIM for being ahead of their time but I don't believe that they could repeat their success if they started up today.

One idea I've been pushing for years is a green tariff. If China can make steel with zero costs for doing it in a clean manner then there should be a tariff on Chinese steel equal to the cost that our government puts on our steelmakers in the name of keeping the environment clean. For years our politicians take the "green photo op" while they add costs to our domestic manufacturers yet pay absolutely no attention to products from foreign countries like China, Russia and India that are the heaviest polluters on the planet!

Free Trade must have a level playing field. Those other countries are busy making trillions of dollars, employing millions of their citizens, belching out huge amounts of pollution into the environment while laughing at how naive and frankly stupid we are here in Canada!

Green Tariffs would be a fair way to give our domestic manufacturing industry a fair chance to compete. It says something when foreign countries can essentially completely satisfy the inventory of a chain store like WalMart, even with shipping costs from halfway around the planet! I invite people to look at the labels next time they're in Crappy Tire and try to find ANY tool that's not from China!

I saw in the paper there's another new solar panel maker up Kitchener way. I wonder if the WHMIS inspectors have knocked on the door yet. We'll see what that does to their pricing when they bid against China to get their products into Crappy Tire.

Here in Hamilton/Niagara, the former fruit belt of Ontario, we no longer have any canneries and fruit farms are going out of business in droves. Some are hanging on by their fingertips by selling directly from roadside stands. The abandoned farms are all still there, of course. The powers that be (mostly city folk in Toronto) have passed many laws to "protect the green belt". This means that the farms can only be sold to someone else who will farm them and not for any other use. Since there is nobody who has figured out how to farm at a loss the orchards just lay there, going wild and untended. As for the farmers, I don't know what they're doing. They don't have company pensions. They expected to use the equity in their farms to provide for their retirement. I guess they have nothing!

Meanwhile, I go to the supermarket and look at the labels on the cans of fruit. There's a few from the USA, a bit of Thailand and South Africa and everything else is from China! Pears, peaches, fruit cocktail, apple sauce...you name it, it's Chinese. Wonder if any of those chemicals that were in Chinese pet food that killed all those pets have found their way into those Chinese cans?

Somehow, I think we need more than just more education to solve these problems!

Edited January 10, 2010 by Wild Bill

[eyeball]

Free Trade must have a level playing field. Those other countries are busy making trillions of dollars, employing millions of their citizens, belching out huge amounts of pollution into the environment while laughing at how naive and frankly stupid we are here in Canada!

It can only be free if its fair.

[blueblood]

Small C said:

Why? Aren't you keeping society rolling right now?

Capitalism 101, the more money that I keep, the more I have to spend on others. Government doesn't create wealth, it redistributes it. Sign up for some commerce classes, it sounds like you need some.

No they don't...well, maybe in your mind they do.

The Irish didn't believe that, and it resulted in a massive economic boom. Why do you think all of those American companies set up business in Ireland rather than Sweden? Might it be tax rates? You keep listening to that broke poli sci. prof, and I'll listen to my multi-millionaires.

That's utter nonsense. If it weren't for living in a society such as this one, many of us would be as poor as church mice.

So you think a society has to soak everyone at tax time in order to function? Newsflash, living off of society makes you as poor as church mice. The numbers don't lie.

pay tax equally? You want the person making 10K per year to pay as much tax as you?

He and I should pay the exact same tax rate. There shouldn't be a free lunch for him, he wants gov't services, pay the piper. And I could care less about him starving or not.

Evil? Please. It's not evil at all. It's the way society works. You do well and you give back.

That's the way your society works, that's how failed societies have operated. In low tax jurisdictions, you do well and your not punished for it. Forcibly taking money from me while the guy down the road gets less taken from him is evil. You can't make people give back, that's beyond unethical. How about doing well and being rewarded for it? What's wrong with everyone contributing equally. Face it you hate the fact that people succeed and you feel good about raiding their bank accounts. That type of behaviour is disgusting and that is why many wealthy Canadians do their affairs overseas.

Where did you buy your crystal ball? Hydro Quebec and accessible natural gas are on the rise there.

Receivers of 8+ billion dollars in equalization in spite of the highest tax rates in the country, proximity to the US, their fair share of natural resources, and proximity to navigable water. If that's not a money pit, I don't know what is.

Ontario's economy fluctuates with the American economy. They are tied at the hip. Until a couple of years ago (The US entered the recession at the end of 2007) Ontario was running a surplus and had a very rapidly growing economy. Toronto still has a rapidly growing economy.

I'll believe Wild Bill who lives there over a naive kid. Of course Ontario was running a surplus, they taxed the dickens out of everything.

No one can, because almost nowhere in the world is there so much of two natural resources so in need that are so accessible. They were growling like Alberta (faster sometimes) until about 2006, when the US started to slow.

If Ireland can do it, Ontario can do it. Ireland has no resources, yet they grew at a rapid rate.

To contribute to society. You just answered your own question.

What don't you get, I already contribute to society more than you ever will by having loads of money in the bank, buying all sorts of inputs and other things, and by investing in companies. Can you do that on the same scale I can, no. Why should I be punished for contributing. There's more to society than government.

Why do you complain so much? You're obviously doing well....and if you're not, well, according to you, that's your own fault. You know the system you're in, deal with it.

I complain because people who contribute less than I do have the gall to tell me that I have to pay higher taxes than they do. I am a voting taxpayer, I have every right to complain about high taxes just like a great proportion of other Canadians. You don't like that people have a problem paying high taxes deal with it.

And in turn, it's one more person that the government can prevent from dying in the street.

So? Somebody dies in the street, who cares.

Oh, and as for your Irish tax rates, well, they're identical to ours as a percentage of the economy. They simply collect them differently: http://en.wikipedia....rcentage_of_GDP

This is what happens when you grow your tax base. There are more tax dollars to come in versus jacking up the rate. Better to grow the base than the rate. Alberta has done that, and they're reaping the benefits of it.

Why is the number going to the US so miniscule? Most Canadians who receive care in the US only do so because they're already in the US or because a province sent them there for a rare treatment. There are a few that buy treatment of course.....many of them like Shauna Holmes, panicking about very little.

If the US system is so good why is there such a huge debate and so many changes happening. If the Canadian system is so bad, why do so many of us like it?

BC2004 has stated he sees numerous Canadians in the US getting healthcare. People don't like to wait in line and are willing to jump the line.

The US system is good, just that their population is so huge, the percentages make it look worse than it actually is. The Canadian system was so bad, that the Supreme court had to intervene, remember that?

That's a very selfish way to look at things again. Leftists don't think we're the only ones who live here. That's why we don't advocate for complete government control. We advocate for balance.

Oh sure balance, the kind of balance where I pay 44% and you pay 25%, must be nice advocating something when you don't foot the bill.

The first rule of becoming wealthy is to save a small amount of money just in case. The second rule is to pay off any debt that costs you more than equivalent savings could earn. Paying off debt should be an important priority for all entities, whether it be people, business, or government.

Government can't die, and further more a government is guaranteed to make money (forcibly collecting taxes). They can take as long as they want paying off debt, they should so that everyone can enjoy a better standard of living. The government debt isn't like a mortgage, it goes into perpetuity.

Actually, you're a bit high at 44%, but relatively close:

https://apps.cra-arc...uctionsJan10.do

According to this (which is spot on for me) it should be just under 40%

I use this...

My link

No, I'm saying that people who disagree with what is the will of the populace shouldn't pretend they speak for some kind of majoirty and expect everyone to change to their opinion.

In other words do as I say, not as I do. Do you know what the will of the populace is? Can you read 30 million minds?

Did Stephane Dion lead his party to victory? Did I vote for them? (no on both accounts) It wasn't the will of the populace. That said, we are going to end up paying for carbon somehow, no matter what.

Given that the AGW thing is a sham, I somehow doubt it. People don't want to give their money to third world countries and hope they go green. Carbon isn't even a problem. Carbon levels were higher throughout geologic history and Earth is still here.

Because they have so much oil money...but Albertans do carry the most debt. I don't remember where I saw that statistic. They also have very few assets. That bubble is going to burst eventually. In a way, it's already started to. It's really too bad.

Like the bubble that already popped in Ontario? Oil is back over 80$, I think Alberta will be just fine.

If you're talking about Canada, that's a bunch of BS.

I will take the words of a multi-millionaire such as Kevin O'leary, over some half baked broke poli-sci prof any day of the week. Who are you to say it's BS, the people who think that they should look after themselves tend to succeed, whereas people who think society should look after them tend to fail, case in point USSR vs. USA.

I'm not telling a fairy tale. I know people that don't work who can and should. Still, I'm not going to live in some kind of dream world where a human life is unimportant just because they don't contribute the same as me.

Anyone who doesn't contribute is unimportant, that's the cold reality of it. Anything else is a fairy tale.

And that's pretty much what our government does.

It can provide a better environment with lower taxes.

I've already told you that I don't agree with that. You stating it over and over again isn't going to somehow convince me that it's what I believe should happen

In other words, do as I say, not as I do, gotcha.

Only in a very strange world are the top 5% of income earners (of which you are a part) in the country being punished.

Forcibly taking close to half of what I make, when others have to pay less is punishment, especially with all of the good I'm doing for the economy by spending/investing/having money in the bank. Do you think rich people bury all their money in a hole and nobody gets it?

[Jerry J. Fortin]

For a number of years I have advocated a consumption tax to replace all forms of income tax. Use a base income at the poverty level and everything over that results in a tax paid at the point of consumption. Collected by vendors and forwarded to the Federal government. One rate for everyone, no with holding taxes and the government is tossed out of our pockets. The more you spend the more you pay, no deductions.

[Smallc]

I give up. Anyone who says they don't care about people starving in the streets and who can't understand that Ireland taxes just as much of it's economy as us...and that Sweden is wealthier than Ireland...and that very few Canadians go to the US of their own volition for treatment (there are recent stats to be found) no matter what I should them isn't worth arguing with.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/pdoc/

And this is where I got my 40% number from.

[bush_cheney2004]

...and that very few Canadians go to the US of their own volition for treatment (there are recent stats to be found) no matter what I should them isn't worth arguing with.

Nope...because you would lose. Canadians go to the USA for many kinds of "treatment", including taxes, particularly when they are higher income earners.

[nicky10013]

Nope...because you would lose. Canadians go to the USA for many kinds of "treatment", including taxes, particularly when they are higher income earners.

Nope, they go to Grand Cayman.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Nope, they go to Grand Cayman.

Or live in Belize and bank in the Caymans...

[Oleg Bach]

Disgrace and a fraud. Have you seen the over view of this installation? They use fuel to heat water to create steam to extract oil. That is like using fire to generate fire to generate heat to make heat..there must be some public subidy going on here..this sure looks like the eternal bail out for oil people. There is no real profit here..just us paying to keep stupid planet destroying rich twits to stay fantastically rich...it makes no sense- If it was pure sweet crude coming up I could see it being real and viable.

[Guest TrueMetis]

Nope...because you would lose. Canadians go to the USA for many kinds of "treatment", including taxes, particularly when they are higher income earners.

I'm tired of hearing this.

This paper by Steven Katz and colleagues depicts this popular perception as more myth than reality, as the number of Canadians routinely coming across the border seeking health care appears to be relatively small, indeed infinitesimal when compared with the amount of care provided by their own system.

My link

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Disgrace and a fraud. Have you seen the over view of this installation? They use fuel to heat water to create steam to extract oil. That is like using fire to generate fire to generate heat to make heat..there must be some public subidy going on here..this sure looks like the eternal bail out for oil people. There is no real profit here..just us paying to keep stupid planet destroying rich twits to stay fantastically rich...it makes no sense- If it was pure sweet crude coming up I could see it being real and viable.

Say what?

Oleg, the price of oil makes the sand viable. What we in Alberta need is nuclear power to supply Fort Mac with its juice. Alternative energy is moving forward in Alberta, make no mistake about it. Geo-thermal systems for new home construction is way up. Wind power and solar power setups are increasing as well. There are always two sides, personal and business to that equation and we need to remember that. There are lots more residences than businesses and a lot more private than public transportation systems as well. We need to rethink if you really want to make a difference. Drive the issue down to the consumer and you will get the most efficient means of tackling the problem.

[Oleg Bach]

Dirty.

[bush_cheney2004]

Dirty.

...not in Iraq!

[Oleg Bach]

Say what?

Oleg, the price of oil makes the sand viable. What we in Alberta need is nuclear power to supply Fort Mac with its juice. Alternative energy is moving forward in Alberta, make no mistake about it. Geo-thermal systems for new home construction is way up. Wind power and solar power setups are increasing as well. There are always two sides, personal and business to that equation and we need to remember that. There are lots more residences than businesses and a lot more private than public transportation systems as well. We need to rethink if you really want to make a difference. Drive the issue down to the consumer and you will get the most efficient means of tackling the problem.

The system of refinement is just too messy. A real attempt to find a better way of extraction would be good also. Also once it is over you can plant all the bull rushes you want and it will not remove the bullshit that has poisoned the land...not that I am a tree hugger, but from what I see the development of this industry was reckless from the begining..you can parrot the word jobs over and over again- but a job is useless unless you have quality of life...and keep China off your turf-- they will destroy the place utterly.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

The system of refinement is just too messy. A real attempt to find a better way of extraction would be good also. Also once it is over you can plant all the bull rushes you want and it will not remove the bullshit that has poisoned the land...not that I am a tree hugger, but from what I see the development of this industry was reckless from the begining..you can parrot the word jobs over and over again- but a job is useless unless you have quality of life...and keep China off your turf-- they will destroy the place utterly.

Oleg they looked at ways to get at this stuff for decades. You ARE looking at the cleanest way to do that they can. There could be more restorative work done sooner, not a big deal. You could make it look prettier if you want, but it won't change anything. China is a bit player, no more. Hey dude the big guys in the sands are Canadian!

[Michael Hardner]

I've owned three blackberries and they've all been manufactured in Canada. Even if we don't do the bulk of the manufacturing, who cares? What we need as much as we need money for R&D is more education. We've got to become an ideas economy and the manufacturing we do needs to be state of the art, stuff a guy in China can't do. We have to lead not follow. It starts with education. Education is the bullet to every problem this country has.

Education for what ?

You can't take a high school class and make them into 'information age specialists'. Unless you're including education to massage therapist, trades, graphic design then I don't know how education will help us compete. Our labour costs too much internationally and that isn't going to change.

[blueblood]

Education for what ?

You can't take a high school class and make them into 'information age specialists'. Unless you're including education to massage therapist, trades, graphic design then I don't know how education will help us compete. Our labour costs too much internationally and that isn't going to change.

Exactly and if you to were walk around a university campus, you would find a fair number of students straight out of China attending.

The only way to compete with china is to specialize in making stuff they want - commodities.

[Michael Hardner]

Blueblood offers us an interesting break from the "emotional" versus "rational" debates that we have here. While he does say:

Not the tugging at the heart strings argument

He also says:

So? Somebody dies in the street, who cares.

So on the one hand, he criticizes the idea that someone would use an emotional argument, but he uses a kind of emotional argument himself, which I guess I would characterize as 'contempt'.

The trouble is, nobody will ever be swayed by someone with a lot of money saying "who cares" about my fellow citizens. The best American success stories have been philanthropists and benefactors to great charities, and have given back to their society. This is what the French called "Noblesse Oblige".

What Blueblood seems to offer is that wealthy indifference that the French Revolution and Bolsheviks reacted to with violence, and that the socialists still use as a cartoony image of affluence.

America was built into world dominance in the 1950s and 1960s on a top marginal tax rate that was several times what it is now - including 90% or somesuch under Eisenhower. Those taxes were NOT used to give handouts to poor, but to build institutions like the Interstate System or NASA as well as the military. We need to pay to keep our infrastructure, institutions, and services strong.

Those best positioned to pay for that are the ones who have benefited from it, through their own hard work - yes - and through luck and other factors.

Edited January 11, 2010 by Michael Hardner

[Michael Hardner]

Exactly and if you to were walk around a university campus, you would find a fair number of students straight out of China attending.

The only way to compete with china is to specialize in making stuff they want - commodities.

Agreed.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Agreed.

You folks are just tossing the concept of automated production out the window! What we really need to do is tap the retail markets of Asia with our own productive efforts at value added consumer goods. We have both the resources and the techmology to make this work, so why are you folks not in the band wagon? Why do you want to import their productive efforts at inflated profit price structures and export only raw materials to them? We need the work and that is found in secondary industry to a far greater extent than primary industry.

[Oleg Bach]

Oleg they looked at ways to get at this stuff for decades. You ARE looking at the cleanest way to do that they can. There could be more restorative work done sooner, not a big deal. You could make it look prettier if you want, but it won't change anything. China is a bit player, no more. Hey dude the big guys in the sands are Canadian!

You have my sympathy. You truely do. Not being very knowledgable regarding oil extraction I can only put forth the laymens opinion. Deep drilling has been in existance in Alberta for decades...as a kid hitchhiking through your privince I saw the wells close up and personal. It makes sense to me as far as the sacred sands are concerned they should have been left in tack and kept natually sealed. I believe that exploiters took the easy way out and went for the sands because they must have believed that it would be more profitable because it is closer to the surface. They were wrong in the long run. The pollution there is man manipulated...deep drilling and harvesting is cleaner - surely there must have been deposits at the deep traditional levels. Calling China a bit player is foolish - China will never settle for being a bit player at this point in time...They are NOT like us..they think 100 years in advance - they are ancestoral worshippers still. Look at the huge tracks of wet land and farm land that they have bought up on Ontario - land that is pretty much useless industrially - but they will in time destroy this land - it does not matter if it takes them 50 years - they are not into instant fiscal satisfaction like us westerners...You will regret every acre handed over to them - in time.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

You have my sympathy. You truely do. Not being very knowledgable regarding oil extraction I can only put forth the laymens opinion. Deep drilling has been in existance in Alberta for decades...as a kid hitchhiking through your privince I saw the wells close up and personal. It makes sense to me as far as the sacred sands are concerned they should have been left in tack and kept natually sealed. I believe that exploiters took the easy way out and went for the sands because they must have believed that it would be more profitable because it is closer to the surface. They were wrong in the long run. The pollution there is man manipulated...deep drilling and harvesting is cleaner - surely there must have been deposits at the deep traditional levels. Calling China a bit player is foolish - China will never settle for being a bit player at this point in time...They are NOT like us..they think 100 years in advance - they are ancestoral worshippers still. Look at the huge tracks of wet land and farm land that they have bought up on Ontario - land that is pretty much useless industrially - but they will in time destroy this land - it does not matter if it takes them 50 years - they are not into instant fiscal satisfaction like us westerners...You will regret every acre handed over to them - in time.

Hey Oleg,

The oil sands run from Grande Praire to the Saskatchewan border and beyond. I have read some things that seem to indicate they run east to the shield. The only issue with extraction is the depth, that is why Fort Mac is the growth are. It is close to the surface there in some places less than a couple meters down whereas in other place it is many meters down. The easy way is to just open pit mine the stuff. You just back haul the clean sand and dump it back in the hole you left. The water issue is the scary part, mega use and polluted residue, that and the amount of natural gas we use to heat water to clean the sand.

Even so, they are small fry in the oil sands, as in single digit development. Its not too easy to get more land up there anymore most of the leases are bought up. They got in late in the game and there are consequences to that.

[Michael Hardner]

You folks are just tossing the concept of automated production out the window! What we really need to do is tap the retail markets of Asia with our own productive efforts at value added consumer goods. We have both the resources and the techmology to make this work, so why are you folks not in the band wagon? Why do you want to import their productive efforts at inflated profit price structures and export only raw materials to them? We need the work and that is found in secondary industry to a far greater extent than primary industry.

Do you have an example of a 'value added consumer good' that we produce ?

We want to export raw materials because that is one area where we have an advantage.

[Oleg Bach]

Hey Oleg,

The oil sands run from Grande Praire to the Saskatchewan border and beyond. I have read some things that seem to indicate they run east to the shield. The only issue with extraction is the depth, that is why Fort Mac is the growth are. It is close to the surface there in some places less than a couple meters down whereas in other place it is many meters down. The easy way is to just open pit mine the stuff. You just back haul the clean sand and dump it back in the hole you left. The water issue is the scary part, mega use and polluted residue, that and the amount of natural gas we use to heat water to clean the sand.

Even so, they are small fry in the oil sands, as in single digit development. Its not too easy to get more land up there anymore most of the leases are bought up. They got in late in the game and there are consequences to that.

[Oleg Bach]

Young documetary film producers can be brutally honest. After having a look at one such documentary..I was disturbed mostly by the holding ponds...Now here is my point as far as value. Growing up on the sandy Oak Ridge Morraine that contained the largest reserve of pure underground water on the planet _ I assume as a boy as Toronto grew closer that they would be coming for our water..that was from the intelligent and clear mind of a 12 year old...under our house was a well that spewed up water under it's own pressure - I drank from this spring all my life - Never in my life could I imagine that you would pay for water..NOW I see water that is worth more than a litre of gas...seeing they use water at the TAR SANDS...it seems they have lost sight of what is of real value - Pure water or some fat ass driving his car to the store for a bag of greased and salted chips.

Getting back to my childhood heaven - once the developers came though my area that consisted of a chain of lakes connected by springs - instead of preserving the wealth they paved it over - THEN once they fully destroyed the area - THEN there were invironmental concerns - TO LATE. Water is life - not oil.