Dalton McGuinty is right about the oil sands and its effect on Canadian manufacturers, says Andrew Coyne, but there's nothing anyone can do about it so we all might as well suck it up, or, better, move to Fort Mac with our shovels.
But if you let your resource extraction industries overwhelm your manufacturing sector, when the oil runs out you wind up with neither. And of course some things can be done about it, as this study suggests. But these things would involve Alberta giving over some of its oil money to the feds and when you raise that possibility the talk out in Calgary switches from pablum about the national interest to what the flag for an independent state should look like.
And have I ever mentioned the irony of a columnist at The Post, which has NEVER turned a profit since the day it launched, lecturing anyone about the rigours of Capitalism? That's like being given lessons in boating safety by the captain of The Titanic.
But if you let your resource extraction industries overwhelm your manufacturing sector, when the oil runs out you wind up with neither. And of course some things can be done about it, as this study suggests. But these things would involve Alberta giving over some of its oil money to the feds and when you raise that possibility the talk out in Calgary switches from pablum about the national interest to what the flag for an independent state should look like.
And have I ever mentioned the irony of a columnist at The Post, which has NEVER turned a profit since the day it launched, lecturing anyone about the rigours of Capitalism? That's like being given lessons in boating safety by the captain of The Titanic.
5 comments:
BCL..
You think Alberta hasn't been handing over oil money to the feds?
Really?
Oh.
You mean MORE oil money.. well, why didn't you say so?
Alberta's talk about independance has always been, at best, an abstraction - while they continue to prop up Quebec in particular, while Quebec, who has been a perennial beggar at the table has, ad nauseum, been seeking REAL independance.
But Alberta is the bad guy.
*sigh*
The fact that we put up with this kind of crap and continue to be members and contributors to confederation is actually quite amazing when you think about it.
...
Oh..
BTW..
You're welcome Canada :)
Ontario has been funding this Confederation since you were in short pants, Robert.
I'm old enough to remember my parents paying 50 cents a gallon while east of the Ottawa and in the States it was 30 cents.
Why? Because we were building the Alberta oil industry. We didn't want them to go bankrupt AGAIN.
Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you Alberturds make your independence talk a little less "abstract".
Ontario has been funding this Confederation since you were in short pants, Robert.
Silly BCL. Don't you know that Alberta has always existed? When the CPR got to Calgary they were shocked to find a thriving community of unfortunately hatted anger-junkies who immediately began lecturing the elitist railway workers about their arrogance and snobbery.
Everything that has ever been and ever will be is thanks to the hard work of Albertans like Rob... and no, it doesn't matter that he's as dependent on the oil as someone in Windsor, that he's as much of a leach as a lawyer in Toronto or Montreal, because he's got a cowboy hat dagnabbit and is a proud inheritor of the magnificent and ancient heritage bestowed upon him by... er... Eastern Canadian administrators some 40 years after Confederation.
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