The Truth About Canada (39 page)

The
Toronto Star’s
Carol Goar asks, “Who loses?”

First, anyone who would rather have strong national safety nets.

Second, anyone who believes that 32 million Canadians can achieve more collectively.

It’s an acceleration of the devolution that began under the Liberals. They withdrew from urban affairs, housing, consumer protection and job training. They shrank unemployment insurance. They replaced public servants with contractors and consultants.
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But do we really want a country where the government is bound and shackled, down on its knees before powerful, parochial, provincial potentates?

Of course, some of the provincial premiers are delighted by all of this, especially by any new tax point transfers that will forever be completely irreversible. An already comparatively weak federal government could be turned into one that is completely dysfunctional, a government where provincial and territorial spending increasingly exceeds that of the national government, in a country with declining common standards and goals. And of course the premiers will never be satisfied. Enough will never ever be enough.

All this - combined with the onerous clauses in NAFTA already described that make Ottawa vulnerable to American government-supported corporate legal action - has helped produce a country where new national programs of consequence are increasingly impossible. Clearly, a weak central government combined with an excessive and growing level of foreign ownership and control is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Yet, somehow, most of our political commentators and politicians seem to be completely blind to the potentially catastrophic consequences.

The combination of Stephen Harper and a separatist Quebec government would certainly mean a major transfer of even more power to Quebec. And anyone who thinks Alberta will not immediately demand every single thing received by Quebec is hopelessly naive. Then, of course, will come similar demands from British Columbia and Ontario.

Welcome to the new balkanized Canada, ready to be picked off, one region at a time, by American oil, natural gas, electricity, water, and other resource corporations. Canadians debated and rejected Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord. But now, thanks to our spineless politicians, we’re headed for a chopped up, colonial status.

Bob Rae, writing in the
Globe and Mail
, put it this way:

For the first time in our history, we have a prime minister and a cabinet talking openly about giving up the game for the federal government.…

What could be so bad about a federal government’s agreeing not to spend money in “areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction”? Looking backward and forward, we can find a simple answer: a lot.…

Whether introduced by Conservatives (progressive or otherwise) or Liberals (in majority or minority governments), our history as a country has been marked by moments of a pan-Canadian vision led by federal governments with the support of Parliament and people.

This is what Mr. Harper wants to end, either by constitutional amendment or federal-provincial agreement. For the first time, we have a national party - the Harper Conservatives - ideologically committed to a fundamentalist misreading of our history and Constitution, and a separatist party only too happy to reduce the Canadian government to a marginal role, just before, in their sad dreams, it disappears altogether.

Canadians who want their federal government to support early childhood education, decent housing, cities that work, a healthy environment, new initiatives in health care, more mobility for students, better research and stronger universities should be appalled at this emasculation.

Thirteen fiefs putting up more walls and moats between themselves and their neighbours does not make a country.
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In an editorial, the
Toronto Star
described Stephen Harper’s recognition of Quebec as “a nation” as “a reckless move.” Now, according to the editorial, Quebec Premier Jean Charest expects Ottawa “to formally surrender the ability to create and support nationwide programs like health care, education, pharmacare, child care, welfare and manpower training. That is what Quebec nationalists have long demanded.”
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And how do Canadian feel about all of this? When asked if the federal government should be involved in areas of provincial jurisdiction, 67 percent agreed and only 29 percent disagreed. Once again, as in the case
of foreign ownership and control, our hopelessly myopic politicians are leading us in exactly the opposite direction from the will of the people.

And it is a fatal direction.

But what would happen if Stéphane Dion ever becomes prime minister? Thomas Walkom’s answer leaves little doubt. The columnist describes an occasion when, in the presence of Dion, “someone raised the social union framework agreement, the 1999 federal-provincial pact designed to limit Ottawa’s spending in areas of provincial jurisdiction such as health. At the mention of the agreement, the Liberal leader’s eyes lit up. He extolled its virtues; he explained at some length why it was such a good idea.”
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Stéphane Dion has supported Harper’s Quebec-as-anation proclamation. Before that, Dion supported the failed decentralizing Meech Lake accord. And the NDP? They are willing to give Quebec total authority to opt out of federal social programs, but the province would get to keep the taxpayers’ cash anyway.

Poor Canada. Poor Canadians. What awful political leadership we have. What a tragedy that the leaders of our two major political parties are prepared to turn us into a hobbled, fractionalized, enfeebled country and the NDP seems quite willing to go along with the process.

35

ENERGY POLICY IN CANADA

FROM THE RIDICULOUS TO THE ABSURD

“The dumbest people in the oil patch”

H
ere, in no particular order, are some of the things Canadians should find incomprehensible:

• Royalties in Alberta’s oil sands have for many years probably been the lowest in the world. Critical witnesses attending public hearings on petroleum royalties and taxes in Alberta in 2007 called the remarkably profitable energy industry “the most heavily subsidized business in Alberta” and said that “foreigners look at us as if we might be the dumbest people in the [global] oil patch.”
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• Overall petroleum taxes, royalties, and revenue-sharing in the petroleum industry in Canada have been less than a third of those in Norway.

• We’re quickly using up our natural gas reserves. In the words of Statistics Canada, “The need to find new gas reserves is relentless.” Natural gas production will start declining in 2009, falling by as much as 15 percent.

• We now have less than nine years of natural gas left, and less than 10 years of proven conventional oil reserves left. New untapped reserves are more difficult to find, and recent discoveries are smaller and more difficult to produce.

• Despite this, we’re exporting massive and increasing quantities of oil and natural gas out of the country to the United States, and allowing the petroleum companies to plan and build huge new export pipelines. In its 2007 budget, the Harper government introduced new tax concessions for new natural gas pipelines.

• Despite all the terrible problems relating to oil sands production (greenhouse gas production, water use, natural gas requirements), we’re planning massive increases in the number of new plants and production.

• Despite their enormous profits, oil companies are still subsidized and we provide them with billions of dollars in tax breaks every year. In 2000, the primary oil and gas industry in Canada recorded an all-time record operating profit of $23.8-billion. In 2006, the industry’s profit was $39.9-billion.

• No other country in the world would have been stupid enough to have agreed to the mandatory sharing and ridiculous pricing provisions of NAFTA.

• No other country would have sold off the ownership and control of so much of its petroleum resources.

• Every country you can think of has well-planned energy security policies in place. Canada has no such thing. Canada is one of only two of the 26 members of the International Energy Agency not to have a strategic petroleum reserve. On the contrary, our policy is to ship all of our oil and natural gas out of the country as quickly as we can.

• Gordon Laxer, of the University of Alberta and the Edmonton-based Parkland Institute, points out that “the United States has a National Energy Policy (an NEP) that emphasizes self-sufficiency, energy independence and domestic ownership. Canada has an NEP, only it stands for No Energy Plan.”
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• In a country that should be the envy of the world for its current and potential hydro resources, we still have no east-west electricity power grid.

• Many countries consider planning their resource use with the needs of future generations in mind. Apparently, no one in government in Canada believes there will even be future generations.

• Where at one time reserves of natural gas were held back for future Canadian consumption, thanks to Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien and the completely absurd sections of NAFTA dealing with energy, the border between Canada and the United States has disappeared. By the time the Mulroney government was elected, Americans had begun to regard Canadian oil and natural gas as essentially their own. Where once it was required that a 20-year reserve for Canadian use was mandatory before any approval of exports, now the petroleum companies can ship the gas out of the country just as quickly as their pipelines can be built.

• In Stephen Harper’s “world energy superpower” of Canada, about 40 percent of the oil used in Ontario is imported, as is almost 90 percent of the oil used in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces (almost half of it from reliable places like Iran, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia). No one in government appears concerned about the inevitable future disruptions of supply.

• Any kind of sensible energy security policy would have Alberta oil and natural gas flowing to Central and Eastern Canada instead of being exported to the United States, and Atlantic natural gas would be used in the Maritimes and Quebec instead of being exported to the United States.

• Even in Alberta, public opinion polls show that such policies would meet with strong approval.

Okay, let’s expand a bit on some of these items. In 1988, the year before the FTA came into effect, Canadian natural gas exports amounted to 36.25 million cubic metres. By the time NAFTA came into effect, they were up to 72.36 million cubic metres, and by 2005 they were almost three times the 1988 rate, having climbed to 104.84 million cubic metres.
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The following are among those who are delighted: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Exxon, EnCana, and the Alberta government.

In 2006, the oil sands accounted for 46 percent of all crude oil produced in Canada. By 2020, only about 20 percent of Canadian oil production will come from conventional sources, the remaining 80 percent will come from the oil sands.

In 2006, production of domestic crude oil and equivalent hydrocarbons in Canada was at an all-time high, “thanks,” in Statistics Canada’s words, “to strength in Alberta’s oil sands.” Production was a record 152.9 million cubic metres (one cubic metre is the equivalent of 6.3 barrels). The latest estimates are that our oil exports will more than double by 2015, and will more than quadruple by 2025. By 2025, conventional oil production will have fallen by almost 60 percent.

Exports of natural gas took 59.4 percent of all Canadian marketable gas production in 2006, while exports of crude oil and equivalent hydrocarbons were 67.6 percent of production.
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How does all of this compare with future demand?

Some forecasts suggest that by 2008 only minimum growth in oil demand will be met, and by 2010 there will be no growth at all.
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Around the world, demand is growing. The United States, with 300 million people, now consumes 25 percent of all oil used annually, but China, with 1.3 billion, uses only 9 percent. This, however, is changing very rapidly. China has already replaced Japan as the world’s second largest oil importer after the United States and is putting an average of 14,000 new cars on the road each and every day.

Is the world running short of oil? Some experts say worldwide production peaked in 2006. North Sea production is in a steep and irreversible decline, and the United Kingdom has found it necessary to import oil for the first time in decades. Production from Mexico’s largest field is in decline. Others say the peak for oil extraction will come two years from now, in 2010. Meanwhile, there will continue to be huge increases in demand, a demand that can’t possibly be met by new discoveries. Some analysts are predicting oil prices in the near future as high as $150 a barrel.

In November 2007, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted
that an “alarming” increase in energy demand will threaten global energy security and speed up climate change. In “the most pessimistic overview of the world energy market we have ever portrayed,” the IEA predicts an unprecedented growth in demand as the world’s overall energy needs rise “well over 50% higher in 2030 than today while demand from China and India alone is expected to double in the next two decades.” By 2030, India and China together will import as much oil as the United States and Japan do today.
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Or, try to import.