Canada’s productivity problem isn’t that big if we exclude oil

[shtferbrains]

Doomberg just happened to touch on this subject this am.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

What a great example Chuck brought up with norway. 68% of their exports are petroleum and petroleum products.
Second biggest export is fish. Seems to me we used to be diversified into the fish industry until the federal government banned fishing.
Norway exports number of other commodities. Everything else is a rounding error.
Tell us again about diversification.
Like the advice I gave to agStar the other day, why not do some research before you make an ass of yourself posting nonsense.

https://trendeconomy.com/data/h2/Norway/TOTAL

[blackpowder]

Even Saudia Arabia is diversifying their economy.

But its oil or nothing, so goes the argument.

Norway took more than trillion resource dollars and diversified into many investments. Its hard to argue against saving one time resource money!

I can see where one gets the feeling the conversation is oil or nothing. And we have done a poor job.
Comparisons to other countries usually don't take into account fundamental differences.
Canada would look quite different if a king was in charge and the penalty for questions was death.
Or if it were the size of Newfoundland with only one set of interests residing within.
The chip on your shoulder hinders you from being part of the solution. It merely creates harder push back.
To actually create money you have to trade for something with value. Always open to suggestions.

[blackpowder]

Here's a scenario. (I'm in eating lunch).
If AB and SK built enough nuclear capacity to be a able to export enough power to heavily subsidize our own use.
Thoughts?

[blackpowder]

With wind and solar you don't own the factory. Socialist utopia sure. But you're buying the panels and turbines from the cheapest supplier. Not us. Same with batteries. Best you can do is mine the minerals.
New patents from research?
Wind and solar are as free as everything else we consume in our living standard.
Nuclear very expensive startup.
But if we're truly concerned about where we are in 50 years?
City states I can see happening.
Like Norway. But you will still have to have affordable energy and food. And the ability to pay for your standard of living. Most countries envy our situation for now.
Unicorn farts are as yet, worthless.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

How would that possibly work, Chuck keeps telling us that nuclear is the most expensive generation while solar and wind are by far the cheapest. Without a shred of evidence to back up that preposterous claim. And real world evidence all over the world that the opposite is true, such as France using nuclear having the cheapest electricity in Europe while Germany with wind and solar has the most expensive.

It is an excellent idea. Especially while our neighbors are installing unreliable expensive renewable energy, there will be a big market for reliable economical generation to export. The one problem with that would be that nuclear is not conducive to quickly ramping up and down to act as backup generation for unreliables.

Another problem is that the federal government has put in so many barriers to any type of project, they will be nearly impossible to ever get built, and the costs would be astronomical just meeting all of the prohibitive regulations and permitting

[shtferbrains]

One problem with nuclear is you have huge amounts of money out for 12+ yrs before you get any return.

The reason for such long build times is regulatory got so bad after 3 mile island that there were no new plants built and some that were in construction were halted.
None of that has changed.
One of the regulatory hurdles is that only Union shops can be trusted to work on Nuclear facilities. Everyone knows where that goes.

If there is ever an emergency shut down anywhere in the world your share capital evaporates.

I would like to invest in a nice local company like Cameco but see a big risk there. They had mines shut down for years and sold off stockpiles after Fukushima.

[furrowtickler]

Canadas productivity problems are directly related to way way too many civil servants and RED TAPE that drains the productivity of this nation

[LEP]

Diversification. As demand for oil declines over time, the over priced drain on capital that is the oil sands are on a path to becoming a stranded asset.

Even Steve Harper the economist said we would stop burning fossil fuels as an energy source by 2100.

Will you be around to see it?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Since Chuck believes that it's the oil and gas industry that is dragging down the productivity of the rest of the country.

There's a really simple way to fix this problem.
End the transfer payments from the provinces whose tax revenues come from the unproductive energy sector, to the provinces whose deficits come from all of the other productive industries.

Would you be in favor of that, chuck?