Who should own Alberta's oil?

[The Terrible Sweal]

I fail to see how the geographic location of someone has any bearing on whether they are perceiving something correctly or not. That's a stand-alone question.

Furthermore, I am not from Quebec.

BTW, anyone, did the Alberta government even try to challenge the NEP in court?

[ticker]

just because it is 'possible' to do something doesn't make it right. The feds could reek havoc on Ontario if they governed by doing what is 'possible' and not what is fair.

" I fail to see how the geographic location of someone has any bearing on whether they are perceiving something correctly or not. "

have you ever heard of this thing called a language bill in quebec

[The Terrible Sweal]

just because it is 'possible' to do something doesn't make it right. The feds could reek havoc on Ontario if they governed by doing what is 'possible' and not what is fair.

We're not talking about 'right' and 'fair' here. We're talking about 'legitimate', which is a much clearer concept.

[takeanumber]

Trudeau bankrupted thousands of Calgarians with is policy.

Literally.

He took away the livelyhoods of thousands of Calgarians.

If Trudeau did that to Montreal by targetting Bombardier with a similar program, Quebec really would have seperated and would have called the decision illegitimate.

And it would be.

Just because a policy takes from the English and gives to the French doesn't make it any more legitimate than taking from the French and giving to the English.

[Bakunin]

listen takeanumber, don't blame quebecers for having the courage to fight against the federal, if your province does not, then its not our fault.

In fact we are fighting against the same federal regime and its default, but sometime i wonder if you are not blind enough to see it.

[ticker]

In fact we are fighting against the same federal regime and its default, but sometime i wonder if you are not blind enough to see it.

then why didn't you vote conservative.... we couldn't vote for the block.

[The Terrible Sweal]

Trudeau bankrupted thousands of Calgarians with is policy.

Literally.

No, he didn't.

[Bakunin]

In fact we are fighting against the same federal regime and its default, but sometime i wonder if you are not blind enough to see it.

then why didn't you vote conservative.... we couldn't vote for the block.

We didn't vote for the conservative because they have no team in quebec. When the conservative splitted, the bloc quebecois was created and when the conservative reunified, 1st they didnt reunified with the bloc so actually they don't have any true representation in quebec, no team no deputy, no publicity, no supporters, they have to restart from scratch and face the bloc wich gathers the most deputy then the liberal that can elect a cow under the liberal banner in some county. When i say there is no team, i mean i can'T even name 1 know conservative except maybe peter stasny because he was a well know hockey player. The tv publicity the conservative did in the 2004 campain where so much no budget style that it looked like a 1980 political publicity. So for the moment the bloc gathered left and right vote not taken by the liberal so it mean evrywhere in quebec except in the west of montreal wich is mostly english and some immigrant part of montreal. And Haper doesn't look quite friendly to quebec, but it may sound funny but you guys must understand that the quebecers knew that if they would massivly vote for the bloc, then the conservative had a real chance to win the election. They did vote massivly for the bloc.

[idealisttotheend]

BTW, anyone, did the Alberta government even try to challenge the NEP in court?

Lougheed signed the NEP, it was a negotiated agreement between Alberta and the feds.

takeanumber   Trudeau bankrupted thousands of Calgarians with is policy. 

Prove it. Or do you suscrbibe to urban myths on a regular basis? The Alberta government's take actually kept going up under NEP.

Whose interest was the NEP really most hostile to?

If Trudeau did that to Montreal by targetting Bombardier with a similar program, Quebec really would have seperated and would have called the decision illegitimate.

Earlier in the thread, it was clearly stated that the National Oil Policy of Diefenbaker pretty much destroyed the petrochemical industry in Quebec.

There are the facts.

[takeanumber]

QUOTE (takeanumber @ Sep 11 2004, 01:17 PM)

Trudeau bankrupted thousands of Calgarians with is policy.

Literally.

No, he didn't.

It did.

I have academic proof, but I can't post it because it's copywritied and the link is behind a firewall (hefty subscription).

Those are the facts.

[takeanumber]

It'd also like to point out that the Constitution is set up to protect individual provinces from the excesses of central Canada, and from each other.

It's how Brown intended it to be.

To have two central provinces (Quebec and Ontario) and four Eastern ones gang up on a single one, Alberta, and to rob it of its wealth, is contrary to the spirit of the constitution.

The constitution was also intended to protect Quebec from Ontario, and the rest of Canada. I seriously doubt any soft sovereinist here would argue against that point.

So, what works for Quebec and Ontario, and every other province, should work for Alberta to.

It's not Albertan Exceptionalism, it's Constitutional Parity.

[The Terrible Sweal]

QUOTE (takeanumber @ Sep 11 2004, 01:17 PM)

Trudeau bankrupted thousands of Calgarians with is policy.

Literally.

No, he didn't.

It did.

I have academic proof, but I can't post it because it's copywritied and the link is behind a firewall (hefty subscription).

Those are the facts.

Facts! HAHAHAHA!

"Fact" because its in some academic argument? Facts that you cannot produce or cite?

Hi-larious.

[takeanumber]

You wouldn't know how to read an academic citation.

Who are you kidding?

[kimmy]

BTW, anyone, did the Alberta government even try to challenge the NEP in court?

Lougheed signed the NEP, it was a negotiated agreement between Alberta and the feds.

Those aren't the facts.

Your claim sounded fishy to me so I checked, and here's what I came up with.

• The Feds introduced the NEP after deadlocked negotiations with Alberta and without consulting the oil industry.

(source: CBC archives)

And, in fact, Alberta did challenge the NEP in court, and won.

• Lougheed held back the development of heavy oil and two large tar sands. He also took the federal government to court over the legality of the NEP and won. In 1982, the Supreme Court of Canada said the federal government cannot legally tax provincially-owned gas and oil wells.

• By the time the court made its ruling the NEP's export tax on Alberta oil had already ceased. Lougheed and Trudeau signed an agreement on Sept. 1, 1981 that put the tax to zero until the court issued a verdict.

(source: CBC archives)

(both taken from a feature called Striking Oil in Alberta which also has some multimedia clips that you can view.)

The Supreme Court ruling certainly challenges some of the claims being made in this thread.

I will have a look later on to get some quantitative facts about the effect of the NEP on employment in Alberta.

-kimmy

[Guest eureka]

Kimmy:

I wondered when that would come to light. It also deminstrates for what a short period the NEP actually existed and, the grotesque exaggeration of the effects on Alberta. I have, on my computer somewhere, an article by an Albertan academic arguing that the NEP was actually a benefit to Alberta. I don't see any point in finding it since it really adds nothing to what is surfacing here.

[kimmy]

I wondered when that would come to light.

You knew about the court ruling all along? Couldn't you have mentioned it a little earlier when people were arguing about whether the federal government could tax Alberta's resources?

It also deminstrates for what a short period the NEP actually existed and, the grotesque exaggeration of the effects on Alberta.

Don't forget, the court ruling didn't overturn the NEP. It only affected that one part of it. The NEP also had other sections, like punitive taxes on American companies, that remained in effect until Mulroney took office. And, the effects may have lasted longer than the policy. American companies were encouraged to get lost; they didn't return at the exact moment the taxes were repealed...

I have, on my computer somewhere, an article by an Albertan academic arguing that the NEP was actually a benefit to Alberta. I don't see any point in finding it since it really adds nothing to what is surfacing here.

Pretty-please? I would actually really appreciate it if you could find that; I'd be very interested in understanding the reasoning behind that position. All of this was before my time and I can only learn about what happened by reading.

-kimmy

[idealisttotheend]

Those aren't the facts.

Your claim sounded fishy to me so I checked, and here's what I came up with.

Sorry, sorry. They negotiated (since 1975 and with Joe Clark also failing), negotiations failed, Trudeau imposed the NEP along with a tax on gas (as part of his post-political-death post-Marguret stategy of imposing or threatening unilateral action in order to get bilateral action. The was knattering and gnashing of teeth (Lougheed cut production Trudeau didn't budge) and then Lougheed agreed to a modified version of the NEP. The feds gave in on gas and got the royalty rates they wanted. Lougheed said that making an agreement with Trudeau was the worst move of his political career as it did not play well in Alberta after oil prices did not rise as expected. There is a famous picture of the two toasting their agreement with champagne.

Those are definately the facts (I sincerely hope ).

And since no one answered my question, the NEP was hardest on the Americans since it was sort of nationalization extra light of the oil industry. Reagan brought it up with Trudeau since the American oil companies brought it up with him. A lot of Canadians stood to benefit if they wanted to be owners of the oil rather than drillers of it, but then we don't really want that do we? We'd rather pay higher taxes, send oil profits to Texas and then blame the federal government for the oil bad times.

Source:

U of C Link

In September of 1981 the two governments finally reached an agreement that would take effect in 1986. Alberta agreed to accept a slightly modified NEP. Lougheed also agreed that the Canadian price of oil would never rise above seventy-five percent of the world price. In exchange, Alberta earned substantial price hikes for oil and the federal government promised not to tax oil and gas exports to the United States. While the provinces would receive 30.2 percent of oil and gas revenue, the federal government would receive 25.5 percent. Despite the concessions that Lougheed received from the federal government, complex factors caused Alberta’s oil boom to collapse in 1982.

[Guest eureka]

Sorry, Kimmy. I found the discussion around the Constitutional aspects too interesting to cut it short. I knew something about the effects of the NEP because I have been through this one in the past. Much of the "suffering" of Alberta was recession related at the time, not NEP. In 1982, I did something of a study of the numbers across Canada who lost their homes in those days. About 5000 did in 1981, in Alberta. The numbers were not much different than in several other provinces

The piece I spoke of is no longer on my computer. It seems to have gone into the ether along with a lot of other information pieces when my old computer died a couple of years ago. It is not among the saved and transferred items.

There was such a piece, though. I did not agree with it all but it did somewhat give ideas that mitigated against the harmful effects.

[takeanumber]

Fewer Albertans would have lost their homes if the oil was there to cushion their blow.

Instead, as a result of the NEP, there was no 'made in canada' price, and everybody in Canada who would have lost their homes from the interest rate rise, still would have lost their homes, plus all of those in Alberta.

Interest rates and the NEP were a one-two punch that hit Alberta harder than any other province.

It was literally devastating. People not only got sqeezed on payments, but lost their incomes, so they didn't even have the CHANCE, even the CHANCE, to respond to the changes. (And surely, many would have survived the interest rate squeeze had they had their jobs!)

The NEP was the Rest of Canada ganging up on a single province. And this wasn't about some willy-nilly, trivial 'night of the long knives' constitutional thing that doesn't impact on many people's lives here, this was something that hit every single Albertan personally and really quite hard, nearly instantly.

Compared to Quebec, Alberta's ongoing reaction makes Quebec's seem like a hissy fit.

[August1991]

There was such a piece, though. I did not agree with it all but it did somewhat give ideas that mitigated against the harmful effects.

I recall the study. It seems to me that it was of the "But on the other hand" style.

I didn't know about the Supreme Court decision and I would like to see it. I am aware that Trudeau and Lougheed eventually negotiated a "new" NEP but Trudeau did this from a position of force.

The NEP's main purpose was to establish a Canadian price for oil, distinct from the world price. The policy became moot when world prices fell.

At the risk of being accused of turning everything into a Quebec issue, the NEP must be seen in a broader context of Trudeau's desire to reform the Constitution. Trudeau wanted to impose the federal government.

[caesar]

If Alberta only can succeed by gouging other Canadians; I have no sympathy. Surely they must have other eggs in their basket. The NEP only tried to ensure a better rate for "family" It did not ask for a below cost deal.

[takeanumber]

Alberta doesn't 'gauge' anybody.

The high world oil price allows Alberta to access oil that would be otherwise unrecoverable, allowing Alberta to benefit from what's under the ground.

If you have a problem with high world oil prices, take it up with Dubya.

Don't blame Alberta. It doesn't control the market.

[caesar]

gouging is what I meant ; it is not gauge.

That is what it is all about; why shouldn't the rest of Canada get a fair deal. Alberta is NOT the only energy producing province; just the biggest; especially when it comes to whining.

[Bakunin]

If the rest of canada get a deal for albertan oil then the rest of canada has to make fair deal to other canadian provinces and inevitably there will be winners and loosers. Thats why i think that if a province want a special oil deal then it must deal it with alberta. The federal government should not interfere.

If all province where equal then we wouldn't need a federal government. Having a federal government open the doors to bigger province to take control of other provinces to force them to do what they want so weither we are equal or we loose our equality when the other province's group against you.

[takeanumber]

Right on Baku.

@Caesar:

You'd whine too if it happeneeed tooooo youuuuuuu.