"Oh Canada - How America's friendly northern neighbor became a rogue, reckless petrostate."

[applegrove]

Oh Canada - How America's friendly northern neighbor became a rogue, reckless petrostate.

BY ANDREW NIKIFORUK at Foreign Policy

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/24/oh_canada#.UchxpQ8av-E.reddit

"SNIP...............................


With oil and gas now accounting for approximately a quarter of its export revenue, Canada has lost its famous politeness. Since the Conservative Party won a majority in Parliament in 2011, the federal government has eviscerated conservationists, indigenous nations, European commissioners, and just about anyone opposing unfettered oil production as unpatriotic radicals. It has muzzled climate change scientists, killed funding for environmental science of every stripe, and in a recent pair of unprecedented omnibus bills, systematically dismantled the country's most significant long-cherished environmental laws.

The author of this transformation is Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a right-wing policy wonk and evangelical Christian with a power base in Alberta, ground zero of Canada's oil boom. Just as Margaret Thatcher funded her political makeover of Britain on revenue from North Sea oil, Harper intends to methodically rewire the entire Canadian experience with petrodollars sucked from the ground. In the process he has concentrated power in the prime minister's office and reoriented Canada's foreign priorities. Harper, who took office in 2006, increased defense spending by nearly $1 billion annually in his first four years, and he has committed $2 billion to prison expansion with a "tough on crime" policy that ignores the country's falling crime rate. Meanwhile, Canada has amassed a huge federal debt -- its highest in history at some $600 billion and counting.



.............................SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. We should have a open discussion of what sort of country we want Canada to be. Instead

of allowing this new narrative to slip in the back door.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

2. Wow. Transforming Canada into a helpless supply region?

That's too stupid for words. This is all we need, a Venezuela on our northern border. Even the grade of crude is the same.

[applegrove]

3. We have less equality in Canada these days. The right want Canada to become more like the USA. Not

Venezuela.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

4. Doesn't matter. Point is, what that article describes is your entire political system being co-opted

What the funds are used for may be to a better purpose in Venezuela than what Harper is doing, but it doesn't matter in the end. Once the oil is exhausted, if you've killed the rest of your country for it, your country will be poor and miserable regardless.
Turning your entire country into nothing but a commodity supplier is a dead end. See Argentina. Didn't matter how you felt about Peron or anything else down there. They went from fifth largest economy in the world to having a smaller economy than Mexico in the past century by relying almost solely on agricultural commodities.
Similarly, won't matter in Canada either if this continues.

[applegrove]

5. Argentina wasn't open to trade in the 20th Century. That is why they tanked. We do need trade.

But we have not discussed how to mitigate pollution or the ill effects of being an oil producing nation. When the NDP tried to start the discussion on Canada potentially suffering from 'the Dutch disease", he got shouted down.