Let¹s Get While the Gettins¹ Good

[madcow]

cakadu, that's been my point all along, you/we are being ****d by our biggest customer (not necessarily our best).We are just a source to them and when empty will be discarded (not recycled )without a second thought.Ship bottled water instead of pipelines or tankers,they will pay the price if they want it,that's their attitude with products shipped into here..
emerald1, I don't know what gas costs out there ,but I paid $1.199 per liter ,regular self serve yesterday at noon and the radio reported $1.289 this morning in some of the larger centers.I think as a nation we are doing business all wrong .Should we cut the production of natural resources?, probably. Will there be massive unemployment,maybe in the short term,but we should be marketing finished products to the world.Value add here.The people who are not working in the raw product beginning of it could be working in the processing, finishing end of it.Down here we send truckloads of logs south,we mine gypsum in the valley and send railcar after railcar of it to the Boston area for pennies a ton and buy back truckloads of gypsum board,at $8 a sheet( ten years ago when I built my house) !We send (used to) beef on the hoof, iron ore from some where else, crude oil from out there.And we buy back steel, plastic products, furniture,flooring,roofing,barbed wire and staples.Everything you look at,product of USA,product of China etc. I had a plum from California yesterday and an apple from Chile today. I'm 100 miles from the Annapolis valley,they grow both here,as well as in the Niagara fruit belt, or the Okanogan Valley.Something's wrong with this picture, we have to look after ourselves first.
cowman, the environment maybe should be on the top of the priority list. If the planet becomes too damaged to live on, where do you propose we go?We are already having trouble in some places with mercury,lead,sulfur dioxide,surface ozone,the Sydney tar ponds here with PCB's, left behind by Sysco steel.One of our biggest impediments to agriculture and aquaculture here is acid rain.Great legacy for our children.Look at the mess at that gold mine in South America,watersheds polluted with (brain quit working and can't think of it)they use to wash gold from the ore.Their catch ponds weren't as water tight as they claimed,and who's going to clean it up.What long term effects will it have on the local people who benefited little from the multinational's mine and are left behind with the problem.

[greybeard]

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html

Paste this address on your browser to see world oil reserves.
Are Canadian taxes on consumption of oil justified with these kinds of reserves?
If Alberta dropped income tax, won't they still have a surplus? Do Arabs pay income tax?

[cowman]

Well madcow, I guess its all how you look at it? Personally I believe this old world will last just as long as it is supposed to, but then that isn't exactly a popular opinion with the left leaning population?
The age of oil and gas is rapidly coming to an end. The technology is out there to replace it, but vested interests don't want that to happen? Personally I don't want it to happen as it is my bread and butter!
I think Alberta should crank up production to the max and reap the rewards...as long as it is going to the people of Alberta!
In Venuzala (a so called Communist regime) the people pay 5 cents for a liter of gasoline! That tells me if Venuzala can do it so can Alberta? Give Albertans 5 cent a liter gas...include our neighbors Saskatchewan and BC, if they care to drive here and charge the rest world oil prices...just like they charge us world prices for cars, trucks, manufacturing goods! Alberta doesn't owe Canada anything...we've paid more than we ever got.
When eastern Canada could buy oil cheaper than the Alberta price, how loyal were they? Did they chant about how we are all Canadians? No they bought it cheap from offshore and to hell with Alberta and their oil and gas industry! Luckily California saw the wisdom of buying a secure and local product and they kept us going!
You reap what you sow?

[ivbinconned]

I don't mind paying the world price for what I buy, If I would only have had the FREEDOM to always sell at the world price

What angers me is that when I was growing malt barley I was told by the "raping" Canadian Wheat Board, a Canadian Government Enity, that I should be happy with the $3.50 they were giving me. I feel sooo protected!

If I could have snuck it accross the border to those terrible Americans who would have given me $7.50 U.S. I would have of course, if caught by the feds, been facing some jail time.

[cowman]

When I was a boy my Dad had some barley that was accepted for malt. Great! He jumped through the hoops and paid the freight to Thunder Bay where it was again accepted for malt. Great! Then after paying for the offloading, elevation charges, etc. it was off to Montreal. Guess who paid the freight on the Great lakes? Yep, my Dad!
In Montreal it was declared feed! So some Frenchman got to feed his hogs on Alberta malt at half the price!
My Dad never grew another bushel of grain for the SOB Canadian Wheat Board and neither have I! I rent my grain land now to my cousin but he also refuses to grow anything that he has to sell to these SOBs! The CWB is Canada.

[ivbinconned]

Now cowman I sure do wish you would be a little clearer about things.

[cakadu]

I would like to point out that I didn't say to go from one extreme to the other - we just need to have a lot more thought going into it before we do it. We are reaping the short term benefit at the expense of untold and unforeseen damage over the long term.

Things cannot keep going at the pace that they are - it is unsustainable. It is an absolute disgrace the way the oil companies are colluding to put prices up and it won't just be at the pump either - it will come in the form of natural gas, home heating oil etc.

Yes, things are moving along very well right now, but it wasn't all that many years ago that oil was $11/bbl. Look at the gloom and doom and whining that went on then about no jobs. The demand that the oil patch is putting on the labor force is unreal - other industries can't move ahead because there just aren't enough workers, plain and simple.

Building our Alberta economy on something as volatile as natural resource prices - when we do NOT in any way shape or form control the pricing mechanism is folly - in my opinion.

We need to be building more sustainable industries that do not rely on things that are as unpredictable as oil and gas prices. What if we were to focus on value-added products and industries, capturing more of the value of the goods we produce?

We've just had the official celebration for 100 years. I wonder what sort of legacy we leave for the next 100?

With all the money that we are making on oil and gas right now, shouldn't we be putting 10% back into the environment - at the very minimum?

[cowman]

Linda, I would ask you what sustainable value added industries we should be building? And who will do the building?
Obviously the business world must be the ones who decide if they want to invest their money? Government ventures usually turn into losers...real fast?
Where could we value add to any product that would compete with the likes of China or India?
Could we do it with food? Who wants our food...virtually no one... at least those who can actually pay for it!
We have few options. We do have a product the world wants, and will pay for! Petroleum products!
Alberta has spent a fortune, in both forfeited royalties and direct investment in the oil and gas sector, and I believe that was a good idea generally? Obviously it has put a lot of money into our pockets, both personally and as a province?
Farmers son says Alberta was once a "have not" province and benifitted from equalization payments...which is true...but it is like the old baseball story? The aging star is complaining to the manager that he isn't being paid enough and isn't getting enough playing time. He goes on to remind the manager how, in the past he helped win the world series, hit forty homeruns etc.! The managers responce "Yea, but what have you done for me lately?"
So Canada sent a pittance 40 years ago...but what have you done for me lately! And what is the likelyhood you'll ever do anything for me again?
Canada is like the over the hill ballplayer....probably never do anything again!
The reasons central Canada built the railroad and "built a nation" was for one reason and one reason alone? To provide cheap materials for the heartland and to provide a market for their goods...in other words a colony?
Some of us are old enough to remember the days when everything we sold went east? Beef, grain, oil, lumber! All the exporting to the US basically happened in Ontario so they could reap the profits of our labor and resources! Many remember the days when grain going to Asia had to go east through ThunderBay and the great Lakes so someone could make a good profit! We were nothing more than a source of revenue for central Canada! Free trade changed that and Brian Mulrooney should go down as the greatest friend western Canada ever had, because he gave us our first taste of freedom from our eastern masters!
The anti-American threads on here are not reality! Take a look at the trade balances between our two countries and then realize a few minor irritants like BSE, softwood lumber, wheat don't really matter? Take a further look into quite a few of these disputes and consider some of the American objections? Do they have any valid arguments for these objections?
Consider how much we sell to them...and then look how much we buy from them...and you will quickly see who is the winner here? We get one hell of a lot more out of NAFTA than we give up! So when you hear these leftist liberals talking about scrapping NAFTA realize that they are not in the real world? They want us to become some sort of backwater socialist third world tin pot dictatorship where the rights and freedoms of the individual are taken away! Where we can all fall down on our knees and worship the "all knowing government"! I think I'll pass...no one can take care of me...better than me!

[madcow]

cowman ,we have some things in common,a feisty spirit for one.I've had friends and relatives ,especially in the last three years say"why don't you ditch the farm and get a 'real' job" I tell them,if I'm going to starve to death ,I'm going to at least do it my way ! I don't take orders well ,or even suggestions.Kyoto is not popular out there ,and not terribly so here ,for the same reasons,N.S. & NFLD finally negotiated a better royalties deal with the CENTRAL masters.Just in time for emissions cutbacks.
On the other hand ,look at the news,hurricanes ,typhoons,dead and homeless, diseases. And its getting closer to home.Katrina for example ,the all knowing ,ever prepared, had no clue what was about to hit them.Sept /03 we had hurricane Juan,labeled the storm of the century.Thousands of acres of forests flattened as though run over by a giant roller.Dozens of silos blown down,barns flat,costal communities wharves destroyed,electrical infrastructure down.Then Feb /04 White Juan,the blizzard of the century,more silos,wharves,power lines.I fed the cows up good Wednesday night and got back to the barn Saturday morning,it's three miles down the road,had to wait for the road grader with the V plow to open one lane of the road.Storm of the century,or these once in a 100 years storm.You hear of them nearly every week some where in the world.Squid native to Mexico caught off Vancouver,water temperatures rise every season it seems.Last year pack ice was so thin it affected the seals pupping season,polar bears found far inland looking for food. Is global warming real,it's beginning to look that way.Are humans and fossil fuel to blame ? I really don't know,the world was a warmer place when the oil and coal was formed.??Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees.Can you see the future for the oil wells?I agree, no one can take care of me better than me.And things that cannot adapt show up later only in fossil records,you have Drumheller,we have Parrsboro.

[cakadu]

Cowman, if the same royalty and tax credits that were/have been given to the oil and gas sector were given to other industries, we would see a significant change. Problem is, that isn't too likely to happen.

Let me ask you this - when all those things were getting shipped east, did we have an oversupply of them or an oversupply to the extent that we have now? Real prices on grains etc. have been in decline since the turn of the century and most definitely in the last 50 years.

Would we have been producing what we could use, with the rest going into the "global" basket as it were? We keep producing more and more of what we can't sell, getting less and less for it while the costs of inputs just keep skyrocketing. Where is the sense in that? It has been a long, slow painful shift from a production focus to one of a market focus. Will it ever happen in my lifetime? I hope so because we are going to loose more and more producers as time goes on because they a) simply can't afford to go on and b) won't keep working for virtually nothing.

Businesses do not keep trying to sell what people are not willing to buy. Why, oh why, do we persist on doing it in the business of agriculture?