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

[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.