Opposition to pipelines an attack on Canada’s social programs

[valve37]

Every day in Canada some 100,000 kilometres of pipelines carry three million barrels of oil to domestic and export markets. Yet in the midst of publicity campaigns by proponents and opponents, most Canadians lack a broader perspective from which to measure the risk/ reward balance of this crucial oil export conduit.

And even though controversy over the safety of oil pipelines has coalesced around the Northern Gateway project, its advanced technology would place it among the safest ever to be built in the world.

At tidewater in Prince Rupert, the crude would be transferred into tankers for shipment to Asian markets. Opponents have campaigned to convince wary British Columbians that a tanker disaster is “inevitable”. Here again, perspective is important.

Each day,more than2,000 oil tankers transport 60 million barrels to global markets. Tanker safety has improved dramatically since the infamous Exxon Valdez disaster. Industry statistics show that while global oil shipments have almost doubled, the frequency of significant spills has dropped from an average of nine per year in the 1980’s to just two per year in the 2010-13 period. The average size of spills has also dropped dramatically, to less than one tenth the size of the Exxon Valdez.

This vastly improved record has come despite the fact the global fleet still includes large numbers of single-hulled tankers, many of which are decades old. By contrast, Northern Gateway tankers will be double-hulled employing the latest construction and safety technology. A study by researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University concluded that spillage volume from accidents involving double-hulled tankers averaged 60 per cent less than single-hulled tankers of the same size.

The bottom line is that Norther Gateway’s tankers will be among the safest in the global oil tanker fleet and having them tethered to powerful tugboats while traversing Douglas Channel further reduces spillage risk to a minuscule level.

After a dozen years of planning, consultation and regulatory hearings costing over half a billion dollars, Northern Gateway has finally received conditional approval from the federal government. But opponents remain determined to stop it.

Unfortunately, few Canadians understand how much the final result will impact them personally. Energy exports contributed some $64 billion to Canada’s balance of payments last year, while non-energy exports continued their decade-long decline to a negative $73 billion. And now that Ontario has mismanaged itself into “have-not” status under the federal equalization program, the four oil and gas producing provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador) have become the sole contributors to the $15 billion in 2013-14 fiscal year equalization payments.

These payments provide vital support to social programs in provinces representing more than 70 per cent of Canada’s population. In addition, the industry pays over $20 billion per year in taxes and other levies directly into the coffers of the federal and provincial governments. Annual capital investment of some $55 billion flows to manufacturers and contractors from coast to coast, making the oil and gas industry a major job creator, employing more than half a million Canadians.

A good news story indeed, but now those economic benefits are seriously threatened by lack of access to vital Asian growth markets. This lack of access has already provided a huge transfer of wealth from Canadians to Americans who have been able to buy our oil for billions of dollars less than its international value. And American politicization of the Keystone XL proposal makes it crystal clear that we can no longer depend upon the U.S. as our sole buyer.

Given that the industry supports balance of payments, equalization grants, tax revenues and capital spending totalling some $160 billion per year, one would think the new export infrastructure needed to sustain this wealth generation would garner support from coast to coast. Yet even if Enbridge manages to convince the National Energy Board that it has satisfied its 209 approval conditions, there’s a very real chance that opponents will stop the project.

This would not only be an economic tragedy for our country, but also a signal that Canadian resource companies can no longer count on due process under the laws of the land. The implications of that to our national prosperity would be even more destructive than the loss of Northern Gateway.

http://www.businessedge.ca/articles/view/opposition-to-pipelines-an-attack-on-canadas-social-program...

[valve37]

NEVER!

[valve37]

"Valve - Here is a REALITY CHECK when it comes to employment:"

All along we were told that green energy jobs created by the Liberals Green Energy Act would be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Instead the reality is loss of jobs with no green replacements and the highest electricity rates in Canada and heading higher we're told for the next four years. What then, Wynne isn't saying.

Here's the real REALITY CHECK Pierre:

“Everyone in Ontario seems to know how bad it’s gotten, except Premier Wynne,” Fife said in a statement. “Despite job losses and plant closures in the headlines almost every day, the Liberals insisted that everything was on the upswing. These numbers confirm what everyone already knew – the status quo isn’t working, and something needs to change.”

********

SACKED

• Private sector employees - 20,400 positions lost
• Self-employed - 32,100 positions lost
• 15 to 24-year-olds - 19,600 positions lost
• 25-year-olds and older - 19,500 positions lost
• Full-time - 26,700 positions lost
• Part-time - 12,500 positions lost
• Men - 31,700 positions lost
• Women - 7,500 positions lost
• Total net job loss from November-December, 2013: 39,300 positions

(Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey)

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/01/10/ontario-loses-jobs-in-december

[pierrelebel]

Old news Valve.  Very old news:

First posted: Friday, January 10, 2014 05:35 PM EST | Updated: Friday, January 10, 2014 05:47 PM EST about last years numbers

Why don't you look at the most recent Statistics Canada report?

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/lfss01b-eng.htm

The numbers clearly show increases in employment and decrease in unemployment.  Exactly what our economy needs!

Ooooops the numbers do not justify your often repeated anti Ontario Liberal view.

Oh well....

Talking of the past, what do you think of that Conservative Prime Minister going around with brown lunch bags containing hundreds of thousands of cash, undeclared to the taxman and on which no GST was paid?  Now, that was real news.

[valve37]

Hopefully it will get better but with a dismal growth forecast tell that to Kellogg former employees here in London. Fiscally Wynne not looking so good dipping into reserve funds so that the 10B deficit doesn't sound so bad.

Ontario fiscal update shows Liberals drifting away from reality

The Ontario government is pulling $300 million out of a reserve account to make sure its bad budget numbers don’t get any worse, Finance Minister Charles Sousa announced Monday.

He gave his fall “fiscal update,” for the budget he introduced in May and then passed in the summer, after that inconvenient election. Its hard numbers show a government whose plans are separating ever farther from reality.

Things aren’t going as the Liberals planned, even as recently as July, when Sousa anticipated a $12.5-billion deficit. The government’s now expecting to pull in $500 million less in revenues than the budget forecast, and has only managed to find $200 million in spending cuts.

That’s a worse performance than last year, when revenues were lower than forecast but the government at least found cuts to match. This year, Sousa is having to shake money out of the piggy bank, pulling from a $1-billion contingency fund that finance ministers traditionally get to triumphantly declare they haven’t needed.

It allows him to say he’s still on track to hit the $12.5-billion target. He’ll even be able to say he’s done $700 million better (if the numbers don’t have to be revised again). But he’s using up his wiggle room.

More grim news: Sousa’s department has revised its growth forecasts for the Ontario economy, and not in the right direction. Growth will be 1.9 per cent next year, rather than the 2.1 per cent Sousa counted on. Which means we can expect a repeat of the worse-than-expected revenue and spending forecasts next year and beyond. The task of balancing the budget in three years, as Sousa still insists he will, is getting harder.

Sousa trumpets that unemployment is down, meaning that fewer people looking for work are unable to find any. That’s good. But it’s being helped along by a decline in the number of people looking for work. That’s bad. Sousa doesn’t talk about that part.

And look over here! The update makes a fuss about everything the Ontario government is doing to crush tax cheats, particularly smugglers of untaxed cigarettes. There’s actually nothing specifically new from Sousa on this, but a vigorous restatement of stuff included in the May-July budget.

It’s flashy, great for getting people riled up about a government sticking it to bad guys, but we’re talking about small money.

Mind you, smuggling is big business on First Nation reserves, where some people buy cheap cigarettes for themselves legally — and where others buy trunkloads to sell off-reserve illegally in bars and shady corner stores, the part of the market Sousa’s targeting.

Ontario charges about 14 cents tax on each legal cigarette, which is the most it’s ever levied. Back in 1994, when tax-dodging smugglers were shooting at each other on the St. Lawrence, federal and provincial governments alike decided that the danger from smuggling, and the costs of trying to suppress it, were too great and they slashed the taxes — from 6.5 cents a cigarette to 1.7 cents.

The black market didn’t disappear but it shrank dramatically.

Now taxes are way up again (hiked 10 per cent with the latest provincial budget alone), smuggling is up along with them, and our government is talking about how we have to crack down on the smugglers because of all the money we’re missing out on.

Police seize millions of contraband cigarettes each year but they miss many more. The government estimates about a third of the cigarettes smoked in Ontario are illegal now.

It’s as if we don’t learn. More likely, there’s political advantage in pretending we don’t.

In its budget, the provincial government figured that hiking taxes on cigarettes wouldn’t affect sales of the legal ones. It did predict that sales would decline in coming years, but because of anti-smoking efforts. Government policies are assumed to have no unintended or harmful consequences, only the intended ones.

Sousa is staying the course throughout, predicting that all his efforts to goose Ontario’s economy will start paying off any day now. The smuggling crackdown is part of a multi-pronged plan to make Ontario’s tax system fair, its industries thrive, its people smart and healthy and (above all) employed.

Hey, maybe this will come. But it hasn’t yet, and Sousa’s plans and our reality are drifting farther and farther apart.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/reevely-ontario-fiscal-update-show-liberals-drifting-away-fro...

[valve37]

"If the pipeline companies really want to push through EnergyEast or any of the others (unlikely) probably their best move would be to work against Harper under the radar and once he's gone start with a clean slate."

Doubt Harper has much say in it. The pipeline for the most part already exists and will be converted from NG to oil transist. I worked on it installing monitoring and mobile radio facilities in the mid sixties in the Kingston area.

Ontario and Alberta premiers meet to discuss controversial oilsands pipeline

WATCH LIVE: Wynne, Prentice speak to reporters on controversial oilsands pipeline

TORONTO – Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is to meet today with her Albertan counterpart Jim Prentice to discuss a controversial oilsands pipeline that would run through the province.

The meeting comes after Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard last month released a list of seven conditions for TransCanada Corp’s proposed Energy East pipeline.

They include emergency response measures, First Nation consultations and consideration of the impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Prentice, who met with Couillard on Tuesday, said Monday all Canadians will “feel the pain” unless several oilsands pipelines – including Energy East – are built.

Prentice has also said he isn’t prejudging his talk with Wynne.

Wynne last week told The Canadian Press that concerns from Ontario and Quebec over Energy East should not deteriorate into provincial infighting.

The $12 billion pipeline would carry western crude to refineries in eastern Canada.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1705428/ontario-and-alberta-premiers-meet-to-discuss-controversial-oilsand...

[pierrelebel]

"Doubt Harper has much say in it."

Maybe he should pull a "Trudeau" (remember the National Energy Policy of the mid 70's) and force Alberta to sell and ship oil to Ontario and Quebec at a "Canadian price" much lower than world prices.  That may solve the problem and he may get re-elected as Prime Minister despite losing all seats in AB. 

[valve37]

Would you then expect the refineries in QC and NB to lower their wholesale gas price and subsequently at the pumps?

Lovely thought but that's all it is.

[valve37]

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