[peck420]

Sunnyways Sunnyways:

As is obvious already, Trudeau will get heat from the left and no thanks from Alberta for this decision. It's a gutsy move to make in an election year.

It's a calculated high risk/high reward move. Most likely made out of desperation, which was most likely caused by the NDP pushing some decent policies forward.

If the 'left' vote splits between Libs and NDP, Cons win.

Alberta, being the Liberal stronghold it has always been, was probably never even part of the equation...much like the initial purchase.

[BRAH]

peck420 peck420:

BRAH BRAH:

Rachel Notley deserves credit for this not Jason Kenney. As for John Horgan he knew Trans Mountain was going to get approved but had to grandstand with the Green Party opposing it to keep his Government in power.

I have to disagree.

Notley, Kenny, Trudeau, Horgan, Weaver et al, all deserve their due credit.

For using the strife of their constituents for political points.

We can still hang persons for treason, correct? All of them are deserving.

All of them are epic fucking failures and don't deserve the air they receive for free.

This should never have been a political debate...EVER!

It should always be an economic and scientific one. Preferably an independent economic and scientific one. Is it beneficial? Is it safe? Can we do better at both? None of these will ever be answered honestly by politicians.

The second anything becomes "political", it is no longer being given the cause, nor concern, it should be afforded. It has failed before it has even begun.

It became a political debate and Notely was the only one who showed leadership during the Circus. It’s also Hypocritical when the usual suspects Bitch and Moan about a Pipeline while remaining silent on tanker traffic in their back yard.

[herbie]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

herbie herbie:

Duh!
The problem was solved just as I said it would be. And all the opposition that happens from now on will have less chance than a Hail Mary pass. The BC gov't knew months ago it can only put on a show, but it still will.

Despite the fact that Horgan is still publicly stating that BC will continue to fight the pipeline, I think the tools have run out of tools in their tool bag and Horgan is only keeping up the pipeline fight rhetroic to show Andrew Weaver that he did everything legally possible to oppose the pipeline like he wanted and that he still deserves the Greens support.

But, now the ball is in Weaver's court because he's the one who kept appearing on TV and playing to the lunatic fringe by reiterating that "this pipeline will never be built". So it'll be interesting to see how a party with 3 members in the Legislature legally stop something that's eventually going to get built, crazies on the protest line or not.

Eggs Ackley.
It's all over but the crying, and it's time for Horgan to ditch the forced tears and let Weaver stand on his own.

[DrCaleb]

peck420 peck420:

I don't get a hand in writing these laws, nor the definitions of the words....but fuck me do I like abusing them this way.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Thanos Thanos:

Ontario debt at almost $350 billion:

http://www.debtclock.ca/provincial-debt ... io-s-debt/

Any other "better managed than you rednecks" sort of provinces Alberta needs to take a lesson from on how to run our place properly?

Relax Bro. At one point the Wynned Bag had the temerity to stand up in the Legislature and try to tell Ford how to run a province.
The problem with Liberals is they assume that anything that's good for them as a party is automatically a major benefit to Canada.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

peck420 peck420:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

But you're right, since the expansion won't solve BC's loss of jobs in the forest sector there's no point in building it at all. Might as well have no new jobs instead of a few new jobs.

Why should any Canadian WANT to save these types of environmentally damaging jobs.

Riiight. But we'll happily pay a higher minimum wage to people working in what are arguably equally destructive jobs in the fast-food industry. An industry that is unquestionably the most wasteful as well.

Yep, let's get rid of the environmentally damaging living wage jobs and keep pumping out those environmentally damaging and highly wasteful minimum wage fast food jobs. Makes sense to me. Besides, gotta keep logging forests if we want to continue supplying the ever rapidly growing fast food industry (and other restaurant chains).

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

The near-trillion dollars worth of taxes that got taken out of Alberta by Ottawa over the last fifty years pretty much ensured that even with the HTF we'd never have enough savings to either diversify or to help those who got nailed during the bust part of the cycle. Good to see the rest of the country still finds it all so amusing to watch though. Canada. Yay.

Sadly, that's not true at all.

Alberta politicians have used the interest from the HTF for the last 30+ years to keep our taxes low. Since inception (but mostly after 1990), the govermnent has withdrawn a staggering $43 BILLION in interest from the HTF (Klein withdrew about $13 Billion)!

https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/3675e47 ... report.pdf

However, if we paid taxes like those commies in Saskatchewan (the next highest taxed province in Canada), we'd generate between $8 - 10 billion in revenues for the government!

Here's what we could have generated in 2018/19:



That huge sum would have had us in surpluses even during the NDP years, and we would have been able to leave the HTF alone.

Alberta politicians, and therefore by extension Albertans, chose that route so we have to live with the consequences of that lack of foresight.

[llama66]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Thanos Thanos:

The near-trillion dollars worth of taxes that got taken out of Alberta by Ottawa over the last fifty years pretty much ensured that even with the HTF we'd never have enough savings to either diversify or to help those who got nailed during the bust part of the cycle. Good to see the rest of the country still finds it all so amusing to watch though. Canada. Yay.

Sadly, that's not true at all.

Alberta politicians have used the interest from the HTF for the last 30+ years to keep our taxes low. Since inception (but mostly after 1990), the govermnent has withdrawn a staggering $43 BILLION in interest from the HTF (Klein withdrew about $13 Billion)!

https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/3675e47 ... report.pdf

However, if we paid taxes like those commies in Saskatchewan (the next highest taxed province in Canada), we'd generate between $8 - 10 billion in revenues for the government!

Here's what we could have generated in 2018/19:



That huge sum would have had us in surpluses even during the NDP years, and we would have been able to leave the HTF alone.

Alberta politicians, and therefore by extension Albertans, chose that route so we have to live with the consequences of that lack of foresight.

I'm in an argumentative mood, but sadly I cannot argue with this.

[Thanos]

If we'd had the high taxes like they did in Saskatchewan then the Alberta boom never would have happened. The Saskatchewan boom didn't happen until Brad Wall was elected and started cutting back the egregiously high taxes they were paying there after having the NDP in charge for too long. Maybe Klein should have left the HTF alone but most of the 1990's was a bad period for the resource sector anyway. Cutting those business taxes was necessary to get the investment to come to Alberta for the following boom. Klein/Stelmach should have paid back what was taken from the HTF but using the funds there for expenses was not in and of itself a negative thing to do.

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

If we'd had the high taxes like they did in Saskatchewan then the Alberta boom never would have happened. The Saskatchewan boom didn't happen until Brad Wall was elected and started cutting back the egregiously high taxes they were paying there after having the NDP in charge for too long. Maybe Klein should have left the HTF alone but most of the 1990's was a bad period for the resource sector anyway. Cutting those business taxes was necessary to get the investment to come to Alberta for the following boom. Klein/Stelmach should have paid back what was taken from the HTF but using the funds there for expenses was not in and of itself a negative thing to do.

Your argument holds no water, because that image shows the taxation regime in place last year - after Brad Wall left office.

Wall may have reduced taxes from much higher taxes, but my point is if we had even slightly higher taxes. such as a small PST or not instituting the flat income tax that cost the treasury billions of dollars, we would have almost never have run a deficit (even under the NDP and their profligate spending). That meant we wouldn't have had to raid the HTF every year for every little scrap of revenue the government needed to pay for hospitals, schools, and roads.

The Alberta Advantage was based on raiding the HTF and NOT saving any of the non-renewable royalties.

Furthermore, the boom under Klein initially was based on high natural gas prices, and because the States lacked LNG off-loading facilities on its coasts, it had only one source - Alberta. Our bitumen boom was due to low royalties and oil instability after 9/11, not low taxes. Until the Americans unlocked their shale, their two main choices were Alberta or Saudi Arabia, and after 9/11, the choice was increasingly Alberta. That's why industry spent the last decade and $10+ billion refitting refineries in the Texas and Louisana - so they could process dilbit.

[Thanos]

O&G became increasingly profitable in Alberta in the late 1990's by cutting back on the taxes that had steadily increased over the years. The boom, as you said, really didn't ignite until after the Iraq war. That being said the business tax cuts can't be denied as a large factor in increasing private sector activity. Every day in Calgary we get a new story about small businesses closing due to the excessively high tax rate the city has imposed on them - the most recent one is a popular bar that made money hand-over-fist thanks to the hockey playoffs and the Raptors win but is still losing revenue thanks to the city deciding that their property that was valued at $3 million in 2016 is now worth $7 million.

Business can't thrive or even survive with excessively high taxes, not even in a market where on the surface the popularity of the service they're providing means they should be profitable. I might be incorrect on some of the details of using the HTF for expenses. On the taxes though? Nope. Low taxes stimulate and high taxes stagnate. It's basic economics that maybe one out of ten politicians will even bother to acknowledge.

[peck420]

BRAH BRAH:

It became a political debate and Notely was the only one who showed leadership during the Circus.

Resource extraction and energy production have been a politcal debate since before Notley was born...so....

$1:

It’s also Hypocritical when the usual suspects Bitch and Moan about a Pipeline while remaining silent on tanker traffic in their back yard.

No more hypocritical than BC trying to increase container traffic, increase cruise liner traffic, increase ferry traffic, and increase resource shipments....except oil.

No more hypocritical than BC demanding that 100% of TMX be dedicated to their gasoline to save a couple bucks. 100% of gasoline is combusted. Not 100% of bitumen is.

There is lot's of hypocrisy to go around, and I am having a blast in my retirement, watching the growing shit storm coming to all Canadians. A large portion of which is thanks to our dear leaders showing the global community just how cost effective it is to shut a Canadian industry down, relative to it's global peers.

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

O&G became increasingly profitable in Alberta in the late 1990's by cutting back on the taxes that had steadily increased over the years. The boom, as you said, really didn't ignite until after the Iraq war. That being said the business tax cuts can't be denied as a large factor in increasing private sector activity. Every day in Calgary we get a new story about small businesses closing due to the excessively high tax rate the city has imposed on them - the most recent one is a popular bar that made money hand-over-fist thanks to the hockey playoffs and the Raptors win but is still losing revenue thanks to the city deciding that their property that was valued at $3 million in 2016 is now worth $7 million.

Business can't thrive or even survive with excessively high taxes, not even in a market where on the surface the popularity of the service they're providing means they should be profitable. I might be incorrect on some of the details of using the HTF for expenses. On the taxes though? Nope. Low taxes stimulate and high taxes stagnate. It's basic economics that maybe one out of ten politicians will even bother to acknowledge.

The point is that taxes in Alberta are excessively low, not that everywhere else is "excessively high taxes". We don't need to match the Maritimes or central Canada, but we should be somewhere in line with the rest of western Canada. As the image shows, we're not anywhere close to any of them.

If Saskatchewan with 1/4 our population can raise $11 billion more in revenue, we should be able to afford a couple percentage points higher taxes to raise a similar amount.

Hell, we don't even need to raise another $11 billion, but another $4-6 billion shouldn't cause much burden to the average Albertan. And if the province had enough to adequately its programs and services, municipalities wouldn't need to have sky high property taxes because Alberta could properly fund transit, poverty-reduction, anti-homelessness, and all the other 'non-essential' things cities have to pay for because the province cannot or will not.

[Thanos]

I don't know about Edmonton but the city council of Calgary is wildly irresponsible with tax dollars. I don't know about you but I'm not taking instructions on fiscal responsibility from the gang that wanted to spend billions on the damn Olympics in a town where too many people are barely getting by. I won't dispute that the province should kick in more but handing more money over to a city government that is simply untrustworthy would be a terrible thing to do.

I also don't argue in theory with the wisdom of a PST. I do note though that having a PST is no guarantee that the government still wouldn't keep increasing other taxes. BC has the PST but that hasn't ever stopped Vancouver from jacking the civic tax on gasoline through the roof, and then turning around to blame someone else (i.e. Alberta) when their fuel costs become the highest the entire continent has ever seen. The GST also never stopped the feds (liberal tory same old story) from increasing every other tax, surtax, or fee that they could, or from inventing new taxes to suit their whims (i.e. carbon tax).

The biggest thing too is this - we'll always be over-taxed compared to our neighbours in the US. Yeah, we can't and shouldn't cut taxes to the bone (especially for the already wealthy) in order to match what the Americans do. But our uncompetitiveness is born first and foremost from our excessive level of taxation. It wouldn't be that bad if we were part of Europe. But we're not. We'll always be a glaring example of taxes being too high just because of who we live next door to. Saying, as some do, that we should pay taxes like the Europeans do is sheer insanity, especially when it was those traditionally high taxes that led to a flood of jobs fleeing Britain and Europe in the first place. High taxes are and will always be a job-killer.

[DrCaleb]

Indigenous people level a crushing blow to U.S. funded anti-oil sands campaign

$1:

Wapass said he respects Indigenous groups that genuinely oppose TMX, but said they’re in the minority.

He’s fed up with American anti-oil influence. Some U.S. money has gone to Indigenous protest groups.

Wapass said he won’t allow for outside interests to keep his people impoverished. “We need money to create that hope within our kids and their kids,” he said. “We need money to look after our most vulnerable and we don’t have that.”

He’s determined to stand up against the U.S.-funded lobby. “The only card they could play is what they played, which is, ‘Let’s use the Indigenous people as a block to advance our personal interests here in the U.S. and let’s pump money into it.’ But we recognize that, we see that, and we’re saying, ‘No, no, no, no. Not on our watch.’ ”

For those with environmental concerns, Wapass said stewardship of the land will be the main priority of an Indigenous-led pipeline company. “I believe if you look after the land, the land will look after you.”

With such strong Indigenous leadership and partnership, a new era of oil and gas development is coming. It will lift up some of our most impoverished people, which will be a huge benefit to us all. Even members of the anti-oil lobby might come to realize the good of this new dynamic. It’s certainly hard to see a downside.