Justin Trudeau the Worst PM Since Pierre Trudeau?

[Dougie93]

The problem for Alberta is not really pipelines, they're shipping plenty of oil right now without more pipelines, pipelines are a canard, Western Canadian Select is just low grade oil being pumped into an oil glut of high grade OPEC sweet stuff, the Canadian discount will persist pipelines or no pipelines.

[Argus]

1 hour ago, Dougie93 said:

The problem for Alberta is not really pipelines, they're shipping plenty of oil right now without more pipelines, pipelines are a canard, Western Canadian Select is just low grade oil being pumped into an oil glut of high grade OPEC sweet stuff, the Canadian discount will persist pipelines or no pipelines.

The glut is in the midwest refineries. If they can pump it to the coast and sell it overseas that oil will fetch a far higher price.

[Dougie93]

It already goes to the coast by train,  and a "higher price" is not really that significant, the Rachel Notleyist Socialist Workers Paradise cannot be funded by anything short of $100 a barrel Brent, which ain't coming back soon, she's got the same problem Vladimir Putin has and the Soviets before him, although really it's Jason Kenney's problem naow.

[Zeitgeist]

2 hours ago, Dougie93 said:

The problem for Alberta is not really pipelines, they're shipping plenty of oil right now without more pipelines, pipelines are a canard, Western Canadian Select is just low grade oil being pumped into an oil glut of high grade OPEC sweet stuff, the Canadian discount will persist pipelines or no pipelines.

Not if we pump Alberta’s oil to the rest of Canada and become totally self-reliant.  That was the original idea behind Petro-Canada and early government investment in the oil sands. Turn Canada into a North American Norway with royalties flowing to Canadians with the side benefit of saying “No Thanks” to Saudi oil.  The US would get unlimited oil supply from a secure source, a friendly democracy that doesn’t fund terrorist activities.  And yes, sending oil to the coasts for shipping overseas is cheaper, faster and better for the environment.

Everyone is pumping a lot of oil right now and there’s a temporary supply surge due to fracking.  Alberta has to be about much more than oil and gas.  It has other assets including ecotourism in the Rockies, ironically.  A challenge for Western Canada has been diversifying the economy.  BC is still very much about logging and agriculture, though it’s also a tourism and retirement Mecca. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Zeitgeist

[Dougie93]

Not gonna happen, none of these fantasies are politically realistic, the Climate Barbies are not going to allow Alberta to have the pipelines, nor the refineries, and with the American shale oil on line now, dirty old Western Canadian Select is going to be worth considerably less, forever, the Americans are going to eat our lunch with their West Texas Intermediate and shale.

[Dougie93]

Moreover,  Canada's bitumen oil is not viable long term, not just because the Climate Barbies are making it politically radioactive, but because it's so expensive to produce while yielding very little return in relation to the effort,  in order for bitumen to be profitable, the oil price has to be at unsustainable levels, if Alberta had more light sweet crude to drill, they wouldn't be in the oil sands in the first place, Alberta's strategic reserve is a mirage, because it's mostly bitumen, the golden age of the oil sands is over, and it ain't coming back. 

[Zeitgeist]

28 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Not gonna happen, none of these fantasies are politically realistic, the Climate Barbies are not going to allow Alberta to have the pipelines, nor the refineries, and with the American shale oil on line now, dirty old Western Canadian Select is going to be worth considerably less, forever, the Americans are going to eat our lunch with their West Texas Intermediate and shale.

No that shale boom is short lived.  America is blowing its load again.  Let’s just hope the bust isn’t too long or deep.  They can try printing more money and quantitative easing...The oil sands oil production has become more efficient, but oil prices have to be at a certain level to be profitable.  Oil prices run high and low.  They’re cyclical. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Zeitgeist

[Dougie93]

3.7 trillion barrels in the American shale reserve is not short lived, unless by short lived you mean decades talking on a century timescale.

[Zeitgeist]

We have a century’s worth of world supply in the ground plus unexplored potential reserves. Yes, shale will give a temporary supply, but the Americans haven’t learned the OPEC game of controlling supply to increase profits, so you’re selling the family farm at fire sale prices.  Alberta figured that out long ago.  I paid $1.80 per gallon in the south.  What incentive is there for engine efficiency?  Might as well buy a Hummer. That’s the real climate change killer.  

Edited January 7, 2019 by Zeitgeist

[Dougie93]

3.7 trillion barrels at current production rates is 1000 years of US shale production, so "temporary supply" if you're talking a millennium timescale and/or are assuming the Americans will increase production  by orders of magnitude on your aforementioned century timescale.

I would submit, seems more likely that oil will cease to be the fuel of choice long before the Americans run out of shale.

[Dougie93]

And as far as your century of oil assertion goes,  again, most of that is shale, which is not going to be profitable to take out of the ground anymore, more likely Canada goes looking for lighter fare  in the arctic when bitumen is effectively worthless.

[Dougie93]

Also, if the "Climate Scientists!" are correct, Canada wont be around in a hundred years; wiped out by Malthusian Climate Change, remember?

[Zeitgeist]

16 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

3.7 trillion barrels at current production rates is 1000 years of US shale production, so "temporary supply" if you're talking a millennium timescale and/or are assuming the Americans will increase production  by orders of magnitude on your aforementioned century timescale.

I would submit, seems more likely that oil will cease to be the fuel of choice long before the Americans run out of shale.

Well the world uses almost 100 million barrels of oil per day. A trillion barrels of oil is 27 years.  How much oil is in the shale?  That’s not the same question as how much oil are you pumping.  

To the other question about when the combustion engine gets phased out, France has the most ambitious plan of a total phase out by 2050, but France’s gg policies are crumbling fast.  Also, how many more cars are the Chinese and Indians buying?

Edited January 7, 2019 by Zeitgeist

[Zeitgeist]

17 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

And as far as your century of oil assertion goes,  again, most of that is shale, which is not going to be profitable to take out of the ground anymore, more likely Canada goes looking for lighter fare  in the arctic when bitumen is effectively worthless.

No, shale is a mostly American thing.

[Dougie93]

15 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

Well the world uses almost 100 million barrels of oil per day. A trillion barrels of oil is 27 years.  How much oil is in the shale?  That’s not the same question as how much oil are you pumping.

The Americans produce about ten million of those barrels a day from the shale reserve, roughly 3.7 billion per year, 3.7 trillion is 1000 times that, thus, at current production rates; 1000 years worth of shale in the US reserve. 

 

[Zeitgeist]

21 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

The Americans produce about ten million of those barrels a day from the shale reserve, roughly 3.7 billion per year, 3.7 trillion is 1000 times that, thus, at current production rates; 1000 years worth of shale in the US reserve. 

 

Sorry but you’ve got about 13 years of accessible shale oil.  Some if it is so deep and embedded that the energy it would take to extract is far greater than the value of the oil.  Also, if oil is too cheap, even accessible shale oil is unprofitable. 

[Dougie93]

On 2/15/2017 at 3:42 PM, Omni said:

I think the biggest foreign policy blunder Trudeau has made was not cancelling Harper's deal to sell arms to the Saudis. I'm sure it is providing some good jobs but a bit of a black eye for the country.

Nobody outside of Canada cares, there's no black eye, the only downside is that the point of the Saudis spreading these contracts around is to buy influence, thing is tho, MBS went and blew that up when they went on a tirade against Canada and told us to go fuck ourselves.   Now they have no influence, and yet they still want the vehicles, I'm not going to vote to throw 1800 people out of a decade of work just to appease  virtues signalers, all of them in Canada.

[turningrite]

7 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

Scheer is an anti-Trudeau candidate, that's what we need.

Scheer recognizes the fact that Liberal voters are for the most part completely unwilling to see the problems with the Trudeau gov't. Trudeau has the Liberal voters locked up, they're goo in his hands when he starts virtue signalling and denigrating other Canadians. The NDP is crap now, and their voters will stay at home or vote Liberal.

Scheer only has conservative voters and whatever votes he can scrounge from the middle. The only chance for this country to get rid of Trudeau is if Scheer can convince middle of the pack Canadians to come out and vote Conservative.

 

My guess at this point is that the best the CPC can hope for under Scheer is to hold the Libs to a minority. I believe CPC members will come to realize they made a strategic error in selecting him as their leader. And the situation will be worse for the CPC if the NDP collapses because the Libs will vacuum up NDP voters, a lot of whom would never vote for any party even slightly right of centre. (Why, after all, is Trudeau trying to keep Singh out of Parliament?) Don't get me wrong here: I believe the NDP is a hopeless and internally conflicted mess. But its collapse will become a much bigger problem for the rest of us when the October election results roll in.

[Dougie93]

Scheer's chances get exponentially better if Trudeau goes and cancels that  GDLS-C contract, because it's not just going to be Londoners who will be enraged, that's the kind of thing that could very well swing Ontario and thus the election

Mind you, I have the way out for Trudeaupe;  just come out and say that the current LAV 6 the Canadian Army is using is no longer survivable against emerging threats, which is true, so Canada will be cancelling the Saudi contract, but fear not,  to replace that contract Canada will be purchasing the latest GDLS Piranha 5 mounted close combat vehicles to replace them over the next decade, with Lance modular turrets and AMAP-ADS active protection systems to be added at Rheinmetall Canada in St.Jean Quebec,  contract for Ontario and contract for  Quebec, win-win.

 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Dougie93

[turningrite]

19 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Scheer's chances get exponentially better if Trudeau goes and cancels that  GDLS-C contract, because it's not just going to be Londoners who will be enraged, that's the kind of thing that could very well swing Ontario and thus the election

The issue will have little resonance outside of the London area and could actually help Trudeau elsewhere. His "progressive" base would be thrilled at such an outcome. Ontario will likely vote along predictable lines. Urban "progressives" and immigrant voters in and around Toronto will likely back Trudeau's party and rural and small-town voters will support  the CPC. Traditional NDP ridings could well be in play, though, as that party continues to implode. Trudeau's disappointing USMCA deal, which didn't accomplish much and didn't get rid of steel and aluminum tariffs, could come back to haunt him and could make for a few interesting battles.

Edited January 7, 2019 by turningrite

[Dougie93]

7 minutes ago, turningrite said:

The issue will have little resonance outside of the London area and could actually help Trudeau elsewhere. His "progressive" base would be thrilled at such an outcome. Ontario will likely vote along predictable lines. Urban "progressives" and immigrant voters in and around Toronto will likely back Trudeau's party and rural and small-town voters will support  the CPC. Traditional NDP ridings could well be in play, though, as that party continues to implode. Trudeau's disappointing USMCA deal, which didn't accomplish much and didn't get rid of steel and aluminum tariffs, could come back to haunt him and could make for a few interesting battles.

Okay, then why hasn't he cancelled the contract already?

[turningrite]

14 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Okay, then why hasn't he cancelled the contract already?

Most likely because reportedly the federal government could incur huge penalties for so doing. Butts, Trudeau's principal adviser, must surely be aware of the political risks entailed in having to pay such penalties. He was, after all, deeply entrenched in provincial Lib politics in Ontario before moving to Ottawa. Most Canadians other than those directly impacted by a cancellation probably wouldn't be too upset if the deal were cancelled. A 2017 poll (See link below.) indicated that almost two-thirds of Canadians oppose arms sales to Saudia Arabia, a percentage that's probably increased in view of the Khashoggi murder. It seems to me that the potential cancellation fee(s) rather than cancellation itself generate the bigger potential political headache for Trudeau.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/most-canadians-oppose-arms-deals-with-saudi-arabia-poll-finds/article36256402/.

[Dougie93]

45 minutes ago, turningrite said:

Most likely because reportedly the federal government could incur huge penalties for so doing. Butts, Trudeau's principal adviser, must surely be aware of the political risks entailed in having to pay such penalties. He was, after all, deeply entrenched in provincial Lib politics in Ontario before moving to Ottawa. Most Canadians other than those directly impacted by a cancellation probably wouldn't be too upset if the deal were cancelled. A 2017 poll (See link below.) indicated that almost two-thirds of Canadians oppose arms sales to Saudia Arabia, a percentage that's probably increased in view of the Khashoggi murder. It seems to me that the potential cancellation fee(s) rather than cancellation itself generate the bigger potential political headache for Trudeau.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/most-canadians-oppose-arms-deals-with-saudi-arabia-poll-finds/article36256402/.

Obvious bullshit is obvious, whatever the penalties are, they are going to be insignificant in comparison to the $30 billion and rising deficit the Liberals are running now, and nobody who would vote for these Liberals gives a rats ass about fiscal discipline, unless there was an inflation crisis, Canadians never vote against waste, if you say that sending 1800 jobs from Ontario down to the other GDLS factory in Toledo Ohio is going to have no effect, I'm not buying he's going to suffer any consequences for a few hundred million in cancellation penalties.

Fiscal discipline is not Trudeau's brand and Trudeau lefties don't care about wasting vast amounts of money, Trudeau's brand is good paying jobs for the middle class, and like I said, it's not just that London is going to lose those jobs, the Americans are going to move them to America and build the vehicles for the Saudis there.

This is why cancelling the contract is virtue signalling, because the Saudis are getting the vehicles, it's just a question as to whether American workers build them or Canadian workers build them, so other than purity spiraling, cancelling the contract has no practical effect except driving Canadian jobs to America.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Dougie93

[Dougie93]

"The issue will have little resonance outside of the London area and could actually help Trudeau elsewhere."

 I just looked it up, it's not just 1850 jobs in London,  the supply chain supports 13,500 jobs, 240 suppliers in London, 500 suppliers nation wide.  

And it's not just losing jobs by the vagaries of the market, this would be families, right across the country, losing their jobs, by direct and deliberate government intervention, to send those jobs to Trumpland instead, just to appease a bunch of far left virtue signalling kooks, having absolutely no impact on the Saudis whatsoever.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Dougie93

[turningrite]

10 hours ago, Dougie93 said:

"The issue will have little resonance outside of the London area and could actually help Trudeau elsewhere."

 I just looked it up, it's not just 1850 jobs in London,  the supply chain supports 13,500 jobs, 240 suppliers in London, 500 suppliers nation wide.  

And it's not just losing jobs by the vagaries of the market, this would be families, right across the country, losing their jobs, by direct and deliberate government intervention, to send those jobs to Trumpland instead, just to appease a bunch of far left virtue signalling kooks, having absolutely no impact on the Saudis whatsoever.

Hmmm... let's see, according to the 2017 poll I cited earlier, 64 percent of Canadians opposed selling arms to the Saudis. My guess that number has since risen, possibly by about a dozen points or more, due to the Khashoggi murder. Trudeau's crew can do electoral if not budgetary math. They're experts at slicing and dicing the electorate into voting blocs. If they do get out of the Saudi deal, as it appears they're trying to do, they'll no doubt try to minimize any associated penalties. The Ontario Libs found out the hard way that the penalties incurred in the gas plant cancellation fiasco, for which taxpayers received literally nothing in return, followed them around like a bad smell. They were never able to shake it off, a fact Butts no doubt reminds Trudeau about when the Saudi deal is discussed. The time to have limited damages would have been when the contract was drawn up. If big penalties have to be paid, it will generate the impression that taxpayer interests were simply ignored from the outset.

Edited January 7, 2019 by turningrite