Monthly Archives: December 2016

Why Not Canada?

Why not Canada?

One of the biggest problems that Canada has developed over the years is the reduction of income to the Canadian treasury.

We no longer have a national railroad when we used to have two.  We have no longer have a merchant navy fleet.  We basically have given away all our commons so carefully built from 1935 to 1974.  In itself this is bad, but we have also lost the revenue which they were created to produce. The less the country’s income the more is required of the working poor who cannot afford overseas hidey-holes.

We have idle steel mills in Ontario, idle saw mills and pulp mills in BC and Alberta, we have closed manufacturing plants all across Canada, we have GMO crops that half the world doesn’t want, and we have no real ability to refine our crude oil or even that gunk from Athabasca.

We have coal all over for manufacturing steel but instead we are shipping it off shore and buying the steel back; we have miles and miles of fertile soil in the prairies poisoned by GMO and toxic fertilizers; we have livestock so full of steroids or GMO grains that they are susceptible to disease:  we have manufacturing plants dead because we won’t produce things that we buy from overseas using our raw products sold at giveaway prices..  We have lost all the jobs that go with this and we need to get them back.

It is time to look to what we can do not what we have been told we must do to survive in the global market.  We have done it before and we can do it again.

This is not protectionism but survival and it is time we stepped up to the plate again.  We cannot successfully trade if we have nothing to offer but raw resources which will eventually run out.

Why not nationalize CP and CN again?  They must be making money and why are we allowing that money to go abroad.  We used to have people traveling by rail from small towns everywhere to market towns , now everyone has a car they can’t really afford and that are costly to maintain and run.   Mom and pop stores have been decimated and replaced by big box stores, almost all foreign owned.  We are told that this is the only way as it is the way of the global market.

We do not believe it has to be this way.

Canada has so much to offer not only to our own citizens but to the world and we will never be complete and sovereign as long as we do not use what we have.   Trade is essential but not at the prices we are being asked to pay.

It is time to say enough is enough and educate our young to work at something other than the texting keyboard on their cell phones.  Give them pride in what they can make and accomplish.

We have a huge diversity of ideas and abilities which are being squandered behind the counters of Timmy’s or MacDonalds.  We have a work force that is unprepared at this time to do the things we all need.  What happens when the baby boomers are replaced with a workforce which does not know  which end of a wrench to use, which lever operates the plough, what wood to use for a solid and fire proof door, or how to shingle a roof or even how to use welding torch?

We have the resources and the manpower and they are both going to waste.

Enough is enough and it is time to face the facts that as a nation we are broke, we need work for our young and we need industries and specially infrastructure owned by and for us all.

Mostly what we need is to rekindle the dream called Canada.

The Canadian Action Party knows all this and can and will make it happen.  You can join us in this venture or you can sigh and carry on the way you are carrying on now.  We would rather you joined us to make that difference in the life of all Canadians, particularly the coming generations.

 

Jeremy Arney

Trudeau and Bitumen Pipe Lines

Jeremy Arney on Bitumen Pipelines.

 After agreeing to the toxification of the Sacred Headwater Aquafer in NE BC  via the LNG fracking process, and a damn  (Site C ) being built on very unstable foundations and based on absolutely false need, Prime Minister Trudeau made three announcements on tar pipe lines and I offer these comments:

 Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline never an environmentally sound project either for the First Nations communities along it’s route or for BC’s interior and coast including the Great Bear Rain Forest, Douglas Channel or Hacate Strait, is now dead. Thus we can expect Enbridge to use Chapter 11 of NAFTA to claim perceived lost profits in the billions if not trillions of dollars in the near future.  What I can say is that the previous government would probably have just thrown taxpayers’ money in a large volume at them as they did with Abitibi Bowater. It remains to be seen what the Liberal government will do.

 Kinder Morgan’s twinning Project to Burnaby BC has been approved without the promised new improved revue panel and without the input of all people of BC, particularly those who will be affected by a spill, but with some oversimplified reviews by the same unqualified NEB.

This was supposedly balanced by the ‘promised’ Tanker Ban on the northern coast (way overdue and very welcome), and increased spill response capability from the coast guard.  Just what this later will be is anyone’s guess as at yet no method of cleaning up dilbitumen spills in the ocean is known; all that is known is that the dilutent used is toxic, and the bitumen will form into balls and sink. Oil spill booms will do nothing.  The effect this will have upon the ocean wildlife is completely unknown.

Until this problem is solved there should be no approval of this pipeline.  Yes, this product is already moving but with the 7 fold increase in supertankers the risk of a spill also increases by a factor of 7.

 The Enbridge Line 3 is another dilbit pipeline, with a lesser degree of hard terrain to cover and is supposedly a more up to date line into the USA, but again without the promised new review process. 

Question I am always asking is why are we not refining this tar in Canada?  We constantly ship this raw product south at a low price and buy back the refined products at a high price reflected in our pumps all across Canada.

The price of oil (or tar) has gone from $100 a barrel to $30 a barrel and the price of gasoline at the pumps in Victoria BC has stayed steady at $1.13 per liter with a change upwards in the summer.  Simple economics should show that refining in Canada would be a win win situation.  Our cheap exports would be down but so would our expensive imports. It seems to me that our trade imbalance is partially due to this current practice of sell low and buy high on our major export/import products.

 The simple measure of refining our gunk here would make a vaste difference to our economic situation and we could even export refined product at a price which would benefit us all.

 There is another aspect to this that should be taken into consideration.  The percentage of a product we can export to the USA,

 From NAFTA:

Article 605: Other Export Measures

Subject to Annex 605, a Party may adopt or maintain a restriction otherwise justified under Articles XI:2(a) or XX(g), (i) or (j) of the GATT with respect to the export of an energy or basic petrochemical good to the territory of another Party, only if:

 

  1. the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the specific energy or basic petrochemical good made available to that other Party relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36month period for which data are available prior to the imposition of the measure, or in such other representative period on which the Parties may agree;

 

What this means is that we can not reduce our percentage of total Bitumen extracted from the sands and exported to the US, so in order to supply any bitumen to China, for instance, we will have to supply much more to the USA at a rock bottom price to maintain their percentage of our production

 On the other hand we have no history of supplying  refined product to the US as we buy it all from them,  so we are not tied by that percentage problem.   Win – win situation.

 Surely someone in the Canadian government has thought of this bitumen percentage because you can be sure that the US has it well under control, and are just waiting for us to try to export some of their percentage of our bitumen anywhere other than to them.

 Incidentally this was originally in the FTA as well, and obviously too good for the US to relinquish.

 What a mess!

 Jeremy