We are trying answer two simple questions: How much does a student need to work to pay their Canadian University tuition? Is it harder today to pay for tuition than is was in the past? How Are Canadian Universities Funded? Over the years various Canadian Governments and donations (Corporate and Read more…
There are many who claim that in the last decade of Conservative rule in under Federal Prime Minister Harper and Alberta Premiers Stelmach, Redford and Prentice precious little was done for Alberta’s pipelines. On the other hand, earlier this year UCP Leader Jason Kenney said that it was completely wrong to say that pipelines had not Read more…
Canada imports about 1 BILLION barrels of oil per year, nearly all into Quebec and Ontario in-spite of the fact that it exports 3.1 Billion barrels of oil per year. These are the specific numbers taken directly from the Canadian Federal Government from 2016: Canadian production: 3.9 MMb/d Imports: 0.9 MMb/d Read more…
Much has been said about the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and while the Trudeau Government has made it clear they do not want to own it for very long, there are rumblings that they will use this as a management tool to develop or support the much needed Energy Read more…
Today Bloomberg’s Michael Bellusci wrote an article explaining that Canadian oil and gas companies are in deep trouble. Here is an excerpt:
Canada’s Energy Industry Faces ‘Extinction’ Without M&A, BMO Says
On the same day, Global News reported:
Feds to spend $280k to study why Canada’s oil and gas sector is falling behind
The federal government plans to spend up to $280,000 for a new study on Canada’s competitiveness in the oil and gas industry as investment lags and the United States offers new incentives for companies to move south…
Source: globalnews.ca/news/4123026/oil-and-gas-canada-falling-behind-study/
In general terms the issue is that with low oil prices, oil companies see better places in the world to put their money than Canada. Oil & Gas “activists” will initially claim a victory here because they have had some impact on making it difficult to get Canadian Oil and Gas to both international and domestic markets.
Last week the NDP Alberta Government introduced yet another budget without any cuts in it. Instead they are relying on growth to balance the budget by 2023 leaving us with colossal debt of about $96B.
Citizens, including me, do not seem to grasp numbers larger than about $10M so some context is key to understanding. To put that debt in perspective, there are just over 4 million people in Alberta, which makes YOUR personal portion of the Provincial debt $24,000. Statistics Canada shows that Alberta averages 2.5 people per household. This means your household will owe $60,000.
Let’s contrast that number of other Provinces.
Both the previous Liberal and current NDP governments in British Columbia have been on similar spending sprees and while certainly not as deep, BC has had many similar economic problems to Alberta in recent years. Think about BC’s primary industries (Oil collapse, softwood lumber disutes…). However, in February 2018 their NDP Finance minister announced:
“Government’s direct operating debt is projected to be eliminated in 2018-19, one year earlier than forecast. This will be the first time government has been direct operating debt-free in over 40 years.”
There has been much talk in the recent decade about banning disposable plastic bags. The basic argument is that consumer grade disposable single use plastic bags are the root cause widespread environmental damage but have ready alternatives, so why are will still using them?
As is often the case with political issues, there is no simple answer to the question “Should single use plastic bags be banned?”. Below are some of the facts and you can decide for yourself if this is a crisis or not:
There is a global crisis with municipal recycling programs that is affecting YOUR community as of January 1st 2018. China is now rejecting all used plastic, except “high grades”. High Grades are used materials that are fully sorted. This means mixed plastics, aka Low Grade, will no longer be taken. The problem for us is that we rely on China’s cheap and efficient labour force to sort low grade plastics for us.
This video explains the Chinese “National Sword” policies that bans 24 different types of products (read: mixed paper, mixed plastic and mixed clothing) and how the US is beginning to deal with this.
We talked to Dr. Christina Seidel, Executive Director of the Recycling Council of Alberta about this issue earlier today. She said that “… (consumer) education is good. We need to be more careful about what goes in…(to the recycling system).
