Canadian Politics Today

no - again, the NEP was only in place for a short period of (essentially) 3-4 years... and accomplished much in that short time frame.

Such as?

It's obviously quite difficult to presume to champion national infrastructure initiatives in a presumed federal-provincial partnership... when the official Conservative Opposition and principal province (Alberta) move to undercut anything/everything about the NEP.

The NEP was a dud because ... of Joe Clark?  As for Peter Lougheed, he fought the NEP in court, winning a minor victory on a point of taxation, and signed an agreement because there was nothing left to do.

In fact the reason the NEP flopped had little to do with Lougheed, nothing to do with Joe Clark, and a whole lot to do with bad assumptions.

Bad assumption 1:
It was assumed that the price of oil would keep on rising to stratospheric new heights. In fact it had already peaked, and dropped heavily soon after.  The anticipated windfall of new revenue never appeared.   In fact if the NEP had been continued for much longer it's possible that the price of oil might have reached the price floor written into the NEP which was intended to boost the income of producers if oil prices crashed far enough.

Bad assumption 2:
It was envisioned that the subsidies for "new oil" exploration would unearth a treasure-trove of new oil in other parts of Canada, especially the north and offshore, which would provide the federal government even more new revenue.  But no new treasure-trove of oil was found.

Notwithstanding, of course, the shifts to increased Canadian ownership (and resulting self-determination/self-sufficiency)... coupled with the NEP incentive programs, were targeted to bring Canadian investment forward to shape/drive that very national infrastructure you keep beaking off about!

That very national infrastructure people are beaking off about would be getting built right now if Mr Horgan weren't attempting to waylay the project.


 -k