Lets Go Canada

Canada easily has the ability to become one of the richest and most powerful countries on the planet.

Imagine if you will Saudi Arabia or the Emirates without any oil; the harsh reality is they would be nothing but fly-blown wastelands populated by goatherds.
Environmentally correct wastelands but wastelands none the less.

Lets take a look at GDPPP. Which is gross domestic product per person.
It means dividing the value of any thing, product, good or service by the population of a country.
It basically tells you what your people in a country can be paid.
Unless your country blows all the money on weapons or wars or your politicians steal it.
Thus a Bangladeshi ditch digger earns less than a Turkish ditch digger who earns less than a Spanish ditch digger who earns less than a German ditch digger.
And so on.
So if Canada has the ability to pay its ditch diggers the highest wages in the world, why would we not?

Here is a list of GDPPP:
1 Qatar
145,300
2 Liechtenstein
122,100
3 Luxembourg
81,800
— Bermuda
69,900
4 Singapore
62,200
5 Norway
59,100
— Jersey
57,000
6 Kuwait
51,7007 Brunei
50,300
8 United States
47,400
— Hong Kong
45,600
9 Andorra
44,900
10 Switzerland
42,900
11 San Marino
41,900
12 Australia
41,300
13 Netherlands
40,500
14 Bahrain
40,400
15 Austria
40,300
16 United Arab Emirates
40,200
17 Canada
39,600

The above is how much each citizen of a given country is worth as a percentage of the countries wealth.

Next lets look at Standard of Living.:
1. Norway (=)
2. Iceland (↑ 5)
3. Australia (=)
4. Luxembourg (↑ 11)
5. Canada (↓ 1)

Canada does much better here because of its strong social safety net and its socialized health care and education ( and believe it or not its effective governance).

But still the average American makes $47,400 a year, pays lower taxes and enjoys cheaper costs of living (housing, gas, food, etc) than your average Canadian who only averages $39,600 a year.
Why then do we choose to be poorer than we need to be?
Trex

Jersey? wtf

Step one on the road to Canada developing the highest standard of living in the world.

Massively ramp up Alberta oil sands development.
The oil reserves are unbelievably huge, second largest known reserves on the planet.
Production as a percentage of known reserves is pitifully low.
Alberta (and Canada) desperately need a plan to systematically and consistently ramp up production of these oil reserves.

The Conservative Party of Alberta under Premier Ed Stelmach have pretty much botched this resource as badly as it could be botched.
Massive royalty increases on both oil sands and conventional oil basically shut down development on all fronts.
Every single upgrader project in Alberta was scrapped.
Rigs and professionals poured south into the US.
Hundreds of billions of investment dollars were lost.
Five complete reorganizations of the Alberta royalty program later the industry is lurching back to its feet.
The jobs, rigs, professionals and upgrader projects we lost south of the line are probably gone forever.
Ed (the turnip) Stelmach has since agreed to step down as Premier of Alberta.
He will get to go down in the history books as the most incompetent Premier Alberta has ever had.
But that is no reason to continue to stall the development of the Alberta oil sands.

Developing this resource involves massive investments.
Yes it is a huge development.
Yes it has a large footprint.
So what?
Canada is a massive country with very little relative industrial development.
The USA with a slightly smaller land area has 10 times the population and at least 10 times the industrial development.
And lets not even talk about Europe.
Our environmental and safety regulations are world class.
What the hell are we waiting for?
Alberta and Canada need to massively increase tax benefits,
tax deferrals and tax holidays for all oil sands developments (remember if it aint built you don’t get to tax it none).
Royalties on new developments need to be cut.
Corporations legally need to be able to get at least some of their initial investments out before taxes kick in.


As to the environmentalists.
The environmentalists are an anti development political movement.

They oppose development, employment, increases in standards of living, increasing infrastructure and societal opportunities.
In short they advocate underdevelopment and poverty.
I watched a low budget indie flick last night called Red Hill (good flick) and the old sheriff had a great line “ They roped off the mountain………God forbid they might step on a fu#king flower”.
And so it goes.

The Alberta oil sands are the most monitored strip mine on earth.

There are 11 university studies ongoing onsite.

Water usage from the Athabasca is 1.5% of average flow (nothing).

The water quality of the Athabasca is fine.

The cancerous fish issue was proven as bogus.

Air quality is excellent.

The doctor responsible for the rare cancer in indigenous people issue has been established as basically an Irish nut and the Canadian Medical Association while having not as yet having pulled his license has shuffled him off somewhere for strict monitoring and rehabilitation.

The complaining indigenous peoples are the ones that are not being “ compensated”.
Somewhere around 350 to 450 kilometers from the site the oil companies refused further “compensation”. The closer five “compensated” bands are completely happy.

The groundwater monitoring by the Province of Alberta sucks and needs to be vastly improved.

The settling pond reclamation sucks and needs to be vastly improved.
And so both should be, and right away.

And that basically is the environmental situation.

There are trillions of dollars in development money at stake.
30% of the engineering, custom tooling and precision machining funding is presently going to Ontario alone.
This development involves the standard of living of all Canadians.
Funding for the poor.
Increased infrastructure across the country.
Lower unemployment.
Massively increased Federal tax revenues to be spent as Canadians
decide.

Lets get moving for heavens sake.
Every day we delay is hard cash money removed from your pockets and your children’s pockets.

Trex

Norway?