Author Topic: The Wreck of BC  (Read 9772 times)

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Offline waldo

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Re: The Wreck of BC
« Reply #795 on: April 20, 2018, 02:22:34 am »
The actual plan to bring Alberta oil to eastern Canada happened much earlier.   Diefenbaker's "National Oil Policy" built the pipeline, and required refineries in Ontario and west to buy Canadian oil.  The pipeline was originally intended to go all the way to Montreal, but Quebec refused. They didn't want to buy Alberta oil, they wanted to buy imported oil, which was cheaper at the time.  Ontario and provinces west of Ontario subsidized the early days of Alberta oil by buying it at prices higher than they would have paid for world oil at the time.   This was a great investment that has paid Canada back many times over.  Quebec and the Maritimes didn't help, though-- they continued buying import oil that arrived in tankers, because it was cheaper.

that's quite the self-serving revisionist spin there! Points-in fact:

- your revisionism has you confusing gas versus oil pipelines. The IPL oil pipeline was built in 1950 (Edmonton to Superior Wisconsin); extended to Sarnia in 1953; further extended to Montreal in 1976. The pipeline your revisionist spin relies upon is a gas pipeline started in 1957.

- Conservative Prime Minister Diefenbaker established a Royal Commission on Energy (1957); principal agenda item was to address the viability of an oil pipeline from Edmonton to Montreal. That 'east versus west' divide you speak to wasn't at a political provincial level (you say Quebec)... the rift was between eastern versus western oil refiners and precipitated PM Diefenbaker's Royal Commission to establish the National Energy Board (NEB) in 1959. The history I review has the NEB accepting the recommendation of a U.S. oil consultant advising that the Edmonton-to-Montreal pipeline not be built... based on the "economics of the day". The NEB accepted that recommendation, which was subsequently formally adopted in the Diefenbaker National Oil Policy of 1961... as a result, coming up on 6 decades later, Western Canadian oil producers have never had meaningful access to domestic markets... and why the majority of Canada's population is still subject to, "the vagaries of international oil geopolitics and continental energy economics".

- further to that Conservative PM Diefenbaker National Oil Policy: east of the Ottawa Valley, Canadians were to be supplied with cheap imported Middle East/Venezuela oil... west of the Ottawa Valley, Canadians were to be supplied with Western Canadian oil. That PM Diefenbaker policy formalized a pattern whereby Western Canada exported oil to the US and Central/Eastern Canada imported overseas oil... integrating Western Canada into the continental oil market while dominated by American ownership. Of course "Irish Eyes" Mulroney, by formal FTA trade agreement with the U.S., further cemented the loss of Canadian sovereignty while substantially weakening Canadian control of our own energy resources... further extended by NAFTA's formalization of the original FTA's so-called "proportionality clause" whereby, effectively, Canadian oil and gas became North American oil and gas with little to no Canadian control of our own resources.

... and you have the ignorance and audacity to challenge the rationale behind a national energy program intended to (ultimately) circumvent what's transpired... to ultimately establish Canadian control, determination and ownership of our own resources. What a concept!
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