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Making Canada Relevant Again- The Economic Super-Thread

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Here is the article by David Dodge, Peter Burn and Richard Dion; there is not much with which one might argue. It makes good economic and public policy sense. The conclusion is important and prescriptive: "the “solution” lies elsewhere: we need to focus less on the equality (or comparability) and more on the quality (or adequacy) of public services; less on federal transfers that redistribute income to “equalize” fiscal capacity, more on federal investments that will create more income and build the fiscal capacity of today’s lower-income provinces. We need policies that promote positive provincial convergence and the development of competitive manufacturing and service industries, and that also reflect the practical reality that Canada’s economic prosperity and political equilibrium ultimately depend on the economic strength of all provinces, especially populous Ontario ... In short, we need to think and look outside the equalization and transfers box, outside the narrow confines of subsection 36 (2) of the Constitution Act, 1982, and look to the broader economic objectives of subsection 36 (1)."

From The Consitution Act (1982):

PART III

EQUALIZATION AND REGIONAL DISPARITIES​

36. (1) Without altering the legislative authority of Parliament or of the provincial legislatures, or the rights of any of them with respect to the exercise of their legislative authority, Parliament and the legislatures, together with the government of Canada and the provincial governments, are committed to

(a) promoting equal opportunities for the well-being of Canadians;
(b) furthering the economic development to reduce disparity in opportunities; and
(c) providing essential public services of reasonable quality to all Canadians.

(2) Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.

Dodge et al say more "promoting," "furthering" and "providing essential public services of reasonable quality" and less "making equalization payments."

I agree.
 
More on pipelines:

1. Enbridge and Northern Gateway may face more competition, according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/trans-mountain-the-other-pacific-pipeline/article4462228/
Trans Mountain: The other Pacific pipeline

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Aug. 04 2012

It is a sunny Sunday and Vancouver is doing what it does best: looking pretty and post-industrial. Morning lights up the downtown’s glass horizon. A half-dozen scooters rip down the road in a platoon. Cyclists swish past Zipcar lots, kayakers and stand-up paddle surfers ply the waters.

But just a few kilometres away, an oil tanker is preparing to raise anchor and slide into port. Soon, it will open its holds, with a total capacity of 650,000-barrels, to a flush of Alberta oil. After 30 hours of pumping, it will slip away to Long Beach, Calif. Oil tankers are, for now, relatively rare here. A tanker sails into the Vancouver harbour about once a week, docking at the Kinder Morgan-owned Westridge Terminal to accept Alberta crude flowing across the Rockies in the Trans Mountain pipeline.

On this day, it is the 250-metre long Aqualegend that glides into place, smoothly manoeuvring alongside the Kinder Morgan dock. Its deck is spotless enough to eat off. The waters alongside the dock are clear and blue; a harbour patrol vessel has to ask crabbers to make way so the tanker can dock. Under blue skies and sunshine, exporting oil seems safe – even easy.

For Canada’s energy industry, however, the tanker route through the North Pacific is likely to be anything but.

The Aqualegend is a glimpse of what is to come: a future that could see a tanker sail past downtown Vancouver almost every day, to pick up oil from a newly expanded Trans Mountain. Kinder Morgan intends to twin the line, allowing 750,000 barrels a day – more than double the current 300,000 – to flow west. Most of the new barrels will be loaded on tankers. The project stands to change Alberta, making it an important global oil player. By placing crude on tankers that can deliver product anywhere a ship can sail, the oil industry can grab hold of global prices rather than selling its product on the cheap to its principal export market, the over-supplied U.S. Midwest. Expanding Trans Mountain stands to change Canada as well, enabling an expansion of the oil sands that will allow years of growth.

And Trans Mountain would change British Columbia’s Lower Mainland as well. Vancouver – home of the Prius taxi – could one day become Canada’s Rotterdam, a major oil tanker hub.

TRANSMOUNTAIN1b.jpg

Proposed parallel pipeline

TRANSMOUNTAIN2.jpg

Proposed enhancements to the Westbridge terminal

Yet the $4.1-billion project’s tremendous economic potential comes against a question mark nearly as big: is it even possible to build the expansion against rising anxiety that oil shipments will stain the shores of one of Canada’s biggest metropolitan areas?

Much rides on that question for Alberta’s energy industry. Take just one company: by 2020, Cenovus Energy Inc. intends to sell nearly 1 million barrels a day, most of them from projects not yet operating. It needs to find a home for those barrels, and the Kinder Morgan project is central to its plans. Already, the company is seeing a substantial lift in price for the barrels it is pumping through the existing Trans Mountain pipe and selling on the international market.

The Kinder Morgan project, in part because of its location, will likely send most of its crude to California, although some may also flow to Asia. For oil companies such as Cenovus, the destination doesn’t matter. Oil is often sold at the dock, and the price there is the international price, no matter where the crude ends up. To “unlock the value” of Canada’s crude oil, that product has to touch tidewater, says Paul Reimer, senior vice-president of marketing, transportation and power at Cenovus.

The stakes, then, are high for Kinder Morgan. In some ways, Canada’s global industrial position depends on this pipeline.

“More market connections increase our global competitiveness and position us to better receive full market value for our growing production,” says Patti Lewis, spokeswoman for Nexen Inc., which has been a supporter of the Kinder Morgan expansion. Ms. Lewis spoke before Nexen agreed to be bought out by China’s state-controlled CNOOC Ltd. for $15.1-billion, a deal that underscores the growing connections between Canadian crude reserves and Chinese energy ambitions.

First, though, Kinder Morgan must find a way to sail huge new volumes of oil beneath Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge and past Stanley Park, a jewel not just for B.C., but the entire country. And the anger that has met Enbridge Inc.’s plans to build the Northern Gateway export pipeline to Kitimat, on the B.C. north coast, is already beginning to simmer against Kinder Morgan. The company has yet to formally apply for the project – that should happen next year – and to publish a map of exactly where the new pipe would run.

Already, the mayors of Vancouver and Burnaby have spoken out against it, as have local first nations. The B.C. government has published a lengthy technical document demanding substantial upgrades to tanker safety along its coast.

Neither the ruling B.C. Liberals nor the opposition NDP, who appear headed to take over in Victoria next year, have declared a public position on the Trans Mountain expansion, but the tiff between the Alberta and B.C. premiers over Northern Gateway seems poised to envelop Trans Mountain as well.

In case of accident

Before the Aqualegend, now loaded with Canadian crude, can so much as untie from the Kinder Morgan dock, it must meet an extraordinary set of demands. Loaded tankers are treated unlike any other vessel in Vancouver, starting with the two specially trained marine pilots they must have aboard, double the normal requirement. They can sail only during daylight, at high slack water, a window that on some days allows just 25 minutes for them to move. They must travel through a clear channel, meaning other ships must wait. Each tanker is first vetted for admissibility by Transport Canada, pre-screened by Kinder Morgan – which denies entry to ships that don’t meet its standards, including one that they must be less than 20 years old – and then inspected after entry by Transport Canada. Where other large vessels must only be accompanied by an untethered tug, a loaded tanker must sail with three tugs connected to it by thick metal cables.

Some of the requirements are new, intended to build on a nearly unblemished record of oil moving through these waters.

“We have never had an accident with a tanker. Not in 60 years,” says Kevin Obermeyer, chief executive officer of Pacific Pilotage Authority Canada.

But spills do happen. Since 2001 – the only period for which it could provide records – Transport Canada has recorded some 13 incidents with oil and chemical tankers in waters near Vancouver. The worst, in 2002, saw 2,300 litres of canola oil spill. In total, over the past decade, 31 litres of petroleum has spilled in the area. But those are minor, and nothing like the Exxon Valdez spill whose memory, and ongoing environmental damage, haunts any new attempts to carry oil along the West Coast. Kinder Morgan is eager to make clear how much has changed since that 1989 disaster.

With the “Exxon Valdez, there were no escort tugs, a single-hull ship, no pilots on board,” Kinder Morgan Canada director of engineering Mike Davies says. Tankers today do not suffer those weaknesses, and the changes “make quite a difference,” Mr. Davies says.

When critics accuse Kinder Morgan of pursuing a risky expansion, the company details the long list of safeguards in place – enough, the company says, that a reasonable person should have little reason for worry.

Oil shipping, Mr. Davies says, is “a highly regulated industry, the people are well-trained and there’s lots of scrutiny of everything that goes on.”

That’s not to mention the cleanup capability on the West Coast if disaster strikes. Barely a kilometre from the Kinder Morgan dock is the headquarters for the industry-funded Western Canada Marine Response Corp., which has equipment scattered up and down the coast and a video library showing every single kilometre of B.C. shoreline, which can be used to focus a spill response. WCMRC must, by federal mandate, be prepared to clean up a 10,000-tonne, or 63,000-barrel, spill. It has 2.5 times the capacity it needs, with resources across B.C. that include 118 fishermen and barge operators trained to help.

Around Vancouver alone, it has more than five times the skimming capacity it needs for a 63,000 barrel spill.

“This coast is, I would say, in pretty good shape right now,” says Kevin Gardner, president of the response organization.

Living with the line

Derek Corrigan, mayor of the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, does not like the oil industry. He doesn’t like how its big multinational players seem unusually capable of profit. He doesn’t like how its sweeping size and importance gives it influence with government. And he doesn’t like how it is looking to build a pipeline through his hometown, where he has served as mayor for a decade.

“Not for a moment do I trust this industry,” he says. “Early on, the promises are wonderful and the infrastructure is new.” But give it a few years and companies, he says, begin to “slack off.”

Mr. Corrigan has first-hand experience. He was mayor when a city contractor hit Kinder Morgan’s pipeline, resulting in a geyser that sprayed out nearly 1,500 barrels of oil, some of which made it into Burrard Inlet. A report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada found that the pipe had not been properly located for the city and, while the blame did not fall entirely on Kinder Morgan, the company compounded the resulting rupture by shutting the wrong valve when it tried to halt the leaking.

In 2009, oil also spilled from a Kinder Morgan oil terminal in Burnaby; Environment Canada said the government does not know how much leaked.

For those who live along the pipeline, those accidents provide a glimpse into a possible future that terrifies them. Local groups have pointed to studies questioning Canada’s spill response – a Canadian cleanup fund has half the money contained in its U.S. counterpart, for example, and though the Canadian Coast Guard is supposed to be the lead federal agency in responding to spills, many of its vessels aren’t equipped with spill gear. While the tug requirements are strict in Vancouver harbour, they are less strict outside of the harbour than in U.S. waters just to the south. Recent government changes haven’t helped, either: a Vancouver-based Environment Canada emergency response office was closed and its responsibilities shifted to Montreal, fact that concerns spill responders.

And both Canadian and international laws place strict limits on financial liability for spills from tankers, whose owners – usually headquartered in distant countries – are held responsible. Those limits vary by product and vessel, but top out at just over $1.3-billion, far below the cost of cleaning up major accidents like the Exxon Valdez or the BP Macondo well – and even a smaller accident could prove immensely costly to clean alongside densely populated Vancouver.

That concern has driven an increasingly concerted effort by first nations to thwart the project. The final stretches of Trans Mountain cross particularly tricky territory, claimed by four first nations. Three have already publicly opposed the expansion, including, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, whose land lies across Burrard Inlet from the Kinder Morgan dock and whose front yards look out on the water where tankers anchor. It is not a nation opposed to development: it has profited from hundreds of condominium units built on its one-mile-square reserve. But the last two Kinder Morgan spills have sent a pungent smell over Tsleil-Waututh land – and the nation, which stands to see no benefits from the expansion, is firmly against it.

If a spill happens, it could devastate “the coastline from Washington to the top of Vancouver Island,” says Ernie George, director of Treaty Lands and Resources. He points to dozens of projects undertaken by the nation to restore ecosystem function and marine life populations to the area.

“We’re trying to bring this inlet back to life,” he says. More oil “won’t help.”

Beyond the water, the pipeline itself is controversial. The Trans Mountain pipeline was built in the early 1950s, entering operation in 1954. A half-century has dramatically changed the land it crosses: Burnaby alone has quadrupled in size since then. To make the point, Kennedy Stewart, the NDP MP for the Burnaby region home to the pipeline, tank terminal and marine dock, directs a weaving route on roads that follow the yellow signs marking the pipeline’s underground path. It crosses beneath sidewalks, beside roads, past schools, through a golf course and beneath landscaped gardens. At an apartment co-op, Mr. Stewart gets out to walk, showing where it runs mere feet from backyard play sets.

Kinder Morgan has said it “will look at alternatives” in areas where buildings have cropped up close to the route. But Mr. Kennedy calls the pipeline right-of-way a “potential expropriation zone,” since people might be forced out of their homes if they stand in the way. It is, he acknowledges, an inflammatory description, but the rhetoric is intended to echo in Ottawa, as West Coast pipelines take on national importance.

That’s true for the environmental groups, too. Kinder Morgan has split its application into several parts, first working to establish tolls for the expansion. That application would normally concern only oil companies and refineries. But Vancouver’s Ecojustice, an environmental law firm, has drafted a letter it hopes municipalities, first nations and landowners will submit to the National Energy Board, in hopes they can argue for higher tolls to cover the cost of cleaning spills.

“It’s a bit novel and it’s not been tried before,” says Karen Campbell, a staff lawyer with the firm. “But we’re trying to figure out how to shine a brighter spotlight on this entire issue – and, frankly, how to slow it all down.”

Yet for all the concern, fighting this pipeline may prove difficult. Burnaby, for one, acknowledges there is little it can do, outside of helping stir up opposition. Kinder Morgan already has its dock, and substantial legal rights to the land where its pipe lies.

“It’s a 60-year pipeline on an existing right of way. They’ve had tankers there for years,” Ms. Campbell says. Compared to the battle over Northern Gateway, an entirely new pipe that would introduce tankers to waters that see very little oil movement today, fighting Kinder Morgan “is way harder.”

2. The second story, being reported on CBC Radio news and on The House is this report:

http://www.cbc.ca/thehouse/news-promo/2012/08/04/northwest-territories-offers-alternative-to-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Northwest Territories offers alternative to Northern Gateway project

Saturday, August 4, 2012


The conflict between Alberta and British Columbia over the Northern Gateway pipeline seems to have put another hurdle in the way of the controversial project.

Now, the Northwest Territories says Alberta should be looking North, not West, to export its oil overseas. This week on The House, guest-host Louise Elliott ask the Premier of the Northwest Territories, Bob McLeod, why he wants to help Alberta ship its oil overseas. We also hear what the Alberta government makes of the idea with International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Cal Dallas.


So, Christie Cark is facing even more problems.

We all know that pipelines in BC are a contentious issues: one that transcends partisan politics; put simple, for many British Columbians the risks (mainly to the environment) outweigh the potential benefits to BC and Canada, as a whole.

The Northwest Territories/Beaufort Sea option is also fraught with problems - not the least being that, despite "global warming," it is not a year round solution.


 
"over, under, around or through": oil, like water, will flow where it can.

Christie's constituents may see BC as the environmental plug that will prevent a global warming disaster but:

Around

to the south the Americans will cheerfully ship more Canadian oil out of Californian port;
to the North the Alaskans (some of whom are Americans  ;D)  are just as eager to develop infrastructure to connect them to the lower 48 via Canada - a combined road, rail, pipeline right of way would sell very quickly;
also to the North our own locals have discovered the merits of developing infrastructure and if a pipeline (reversible) gets a highway finished to the North Coast, along with a deepwater port then so much the better;
other "arounds" are Churchill and Thunder Bay, not to mention Halifax and the US Gulf Coast.

Through

Kinder-Morgan.

So, it becomes a case of "get on board and get your bit" or "get left behind"  and in the process cause the rest of the country to question BC's commitment to Confederation.  What is the point of a partner that will not co-operate in the interest of the national good?
 
Just ship it East....land is flatter, twin with existing pipelines, etc.....
 
Widen the St-Lawrence Seaway and commit to keeping it as a year round transit route?  Ice-strengthened double-hull tankers?
 
Further to the subject of Around - Bloomberg 2007

Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska (Update4)

By Yuriy Humber and Bradley Cook - April 18, 2007 16:38 EDT

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russia plans to build the world's longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, told reporters in Moscow today. State organizations and private companies in partnership would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he said.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.

``This will be a business project, not a political one,'' Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of Russia's agency for special economic zones, said at the media briefing. Russian officials will formally present the plan to the U.S. and Canadian governments next week, Razbegin said.

The Bering Strait tunnel will cost $10 billion to $12 billion, and the rest of the investment will be spent on the entire transport corridor, the plan estimates.

``The project is a monster,'' Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist with Trust Investment Bank in Moscow, said in an interview. ``The Chinese are crying out for our commodities and willing to finance the transport links, and we're sending oil to Alaska.''

In Alaska, a supporter of the project is former Governor Walter Joseph Hickel, who plans to co-chair a conference on the subject in Moscow next week.

``Governor Hickel has long supported this concept, and he talks about it and writes about it,'' said Malcolm Roberts, a senior fellow at the Anchorage-based Institute of the North, a research policy group focused on Arctic issues. Hickel governed Alaska from 1966 to 1969 as a Republican and then from 1990 to 1994 as a member of the Independence Party.

Alaska's current officials, however, are preoccupied with other issues, including a plan to develop a pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the lower 48 U.S. states, Roberts said.

The U.S. government's Federal Railroad Administration isn't directly involved in talks about the link, agency spokesman Warren Flatau said today.

Finance Agencies

Tsar Nicholas II, Russia's last emperor, was the first Russian leader to approve a plan for a tunnel under the Bering Strait, in 1905, 38 years after his grandfather sold Alaska to America for $7.2 million. World War I ended the project.

The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link. Investors in the so-called public-private partnership include OAO Russian Railways, national utility OAO Unified Energy System and pipeline operator OAO Transneft, according to a press release which was handed out at the media briefing and bore the companies' logos.

Russia and the U.S. may each eventually take 25 percent stakes, with private investors and international finance agencies as other shareholders, Razbegin said. ``The governments will act as guarantors for private money,'' he said.

The World Link will save North America and Far East Russia $20 billion a year on electricity costs, said Vasily Zubakin, deputy chief executive officer of OAO Hydro OGK, Unified Energy's hydropower unit and a potential investor.

Transport Electricity

``It's cheaper to transport electricity east, and with our unique tidal resources, the potential is real,'' Zubakin said. Hydro OGK plans by 2020 to build the Tugurskaya and Pendzhinskaya tidal plants, each with capacity of as much as 10 gigawatts, in the Okhotsk Sea, close to Sakhalin Island.

The project envisions building high-voltage power lines with a capacity of up to 15 gigawatts to supply the new rail links and also export to North America.

Russian Railways is working on the rail route from Pravaya Lena, south of Yakutsk in the Sakha republic, to Uelen on the Bering Strait, a 3,500 kilometer stretch. The link could carry commodities from eastern Siberia and Sakha to North American export markets, said Artur Alexeyev, Sakha's vice president.

The two regions hold most of Russia's metal and mineral reserves ``and yet only 1.5 percent of it is developed due to lack of infrastructure and tough conditions,'' Alexeyev said.

Cluster Projects

Rail links in Russia and the U.S., where an almost 2,000- kilometer stretch from Angora to Fort Nelson in Canada would continue the route, would cost up to $15 billion, Razbegin said. With cargo traffic of as much as 100 million tons annually expected on the World Link, the investments in the rail section could be repaid in 20 years, he said.

``The transit link is that string on which all our industrial cluster projects could hang,'' Zubakin said.

Japan, China and Korea have expressed interest in the project, with Japanese companies offering to burrow the tunnel under the Bering Strait for $60 million a kilometer, half the price set down in the project, Razbegin said.

``This will certainly help to develop Siberia and the Far East, but better port infrastructure would do that too and not cost $65 billion,'' Trust's Nadorshin said. ``For all we know, the U.S. doesn't want to make Alaska a transport hub.''

The figures for the project come from a preliminary feasibility study. A full study could be funded from Russia's investment fund, set aside for large infrastructure projects, Bystrov said.
 
I have been ranting about this in the Why is Europe ungovernable? thread but here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is more, in an especially Canadian context:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-a-pq-win-could-give-new-powers-to-the-rest-of-canada/article4481976/
Why a PQ win could give new powers to the rest of Canada

JOHN IBBITSON
The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Aug. 15 2012

The Parti Québécois’ avowed strategy for independence, should it win the Quebec election, is to demand a raft of new powers from Ottawa. If Prime Minister Stephen Harper refuses, the party will then use that rejection as the basis for another referendum on sovereignty.

This approach could end up conferring new powers on other provinces, Alberta in particular. The reason is the Calgary Declaration.

If you’ve ever heard of the Calgary Declaration, you may have forgotten about it by now. Experts on Canadian federalism aren’t sure it’s even alive.

“The Calgary Declaration isn’t dead, but it’s not well,” is how Thomas Courchene, the distinguished political scientist who has just retired from Queen’s University, puts it.

But the accord could be about to have a new lease on life.

In 1997, the premiers gathered in Calgary to craft their own response to Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard’s demand that Quebec be given new powers. At the time, Ralph Klein in Alberta and Mike Harris in Ontario were also at loggerheads with the Chretien government.

The premiers wanted to show that they could contribute to national unity while also standing up for provincial rights. The Calgary Declaration was their solution.

The declaration, which Mr. Bouchard refused to sign, maintained that “all provinces, while diverse in their characteristics, have equality of status.” It recognized “the unique character of Quebec society.” And it insisted that if Ottawa conferred any powers to a province through a constitutional amendment, “these powers must be available to all provinces.”

The third point is the kicker. It asserts that the federal government has no right to make deals with Quebec that don’t apply to Alberta, Ontario or any other province that wants the same deal.

Former PM Paul Martin recognized this principle when he negotiated a health-care accord with the provinces in 2004. He gave oral assurances that the special conditions that applied to Quebec in the accord would also apply to any other province that wanted the same conditions.

Mr. Harper, when he was leader of the Canadian Alliance, condemned the “unique character” clause of the declaration as “a poorly thought-out sop to the separatists.”

But since becoming prime minister, Mr. Harper has recognized the Québécois as a nation within Canada. He is also devoted to the principle of not interfering in provincial jurisdictions.

That principle of non-interference has led to a period of calm on the federal-provincial front, consigning the Calgary Declaration, the Social Union Framework Agreement and other relics of the constitutional wars to dusty shelves.

But now Pauline Marois seeks to foment fresh hostilities. If she gets the chance, old accords could become new again.

Mr. Harper was co-author of the infamous Firewall letter, which demanded more powers for Alberta,. He certainly knows that appeasing the sovereigntists in Quebec would enrage his own supporters and stoke separatist sentiment in his home province.

If a Premier Marois demands that Ottawa hand over, say, complete control of Employment Insurance in Quebec to Quebec, the Prime Minister will simply say no.

But if the political situation becomes so volatile that he is forced to negotiate, he will almost certainly offer other provinces whatever he offers Quebec.

The Calgary Declaration, if not alive and well, is at least sitting up and taking nourishment.


I think Ibbittson is on the right track but I suspect that Prime Minister Harper is more inclined towards decentralization than Ibbittson thinks. My guess is that Stephen Harper wants to decentralize in order to accomplish Constitutional 'correctness' and administrative (and, consequentially financial) clarity - the way to do that is through decentralization, beginning with a federal withdrawal from the many and sundry areas of provincial jurisdiction into which it has intruded over the past century.
 
I agree with you ERC.

My sense of Stephen Harper's modus operandi is that he is not inclined to use blunt force, in fact he may not be inclined to use any force at all, to achieve his objectives.  Instead he just waits and watches for cracks and fissures to open due the natural progression of forces and then gently inserts a shim when it suits him to prevent the crack from closing and healing.  Eventually a permanent divergence of the type he desires is achieved.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
There is one thing about which the Good Grey Globe's national affairs columnist Jeffrey Simpson and I agree: Canada has a productivity problem. He outlines part of it in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/exploiting-canadas-resources-can-be-a-fools-game/article2345076/

Despite his unnecessary and uncalled for anti-Harper dig, Simpson gets most of it right.

At the risk of repeating myself: low productivity is not the workers' fault, although trade unions that try to stifle productivity in order to featherbed jobs are part of the problem. Governments are only a minor part of the problem: they can do better in some tax policies (making it cheaper/easier to import technology and tooling, for example), some support programmes (to offset those put in place by our trading partners) and promoting freer and freer trade, even in agriculture and food, and better and better focused R&D support. The main problem is a risk averse business culture.

But: our resource base does provide a nice cushion and we should not stop or even slow exploiting it. In fact we can, should be establishing new, productive resource extraction and distribution industries.


I know everyone gets bored to tears when I mention productivity but it does matter. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is report that quotes Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on how and why corporate Canada is screwing us, in productivity terms:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/free-up-dead-money-carney-exhorts-corporate-canada/article4493091/
Free up 'dead money,' Carney exhorts corporate Canada

KEVIN CARMICHAEL, RICHARD BLACKWELL AND GREG KEENAN
The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Aug. 22 2012

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has taken a rare swing at corporate Canada, accusing companies of sitting on huge piles of “dead money” that should be invested productively or returned to investors.

Mr. Carney acknowledged that companies are wary about the global economy’s prospects because of debt problems in Europe, but he said Canadian executives are underestimating the resolve of the central bank and other authorities to guard against a financial crisis.

Answering questions after a speech to the Canadian Auto Workers, Mr. Carney suggested that with hundreds of billions of dollars in their bank accounts, Canadian firms aren’t doing enough to drive economic growth and create new jobs.

“The level of caution could be viewed as excessive,” he said. Referring to corporate managers, he added, “Their job is to put money to work and if they can’t think of what to do with it, they should give it back to their shareholders.”

It’s unusual for a central banker to criticize the country’s corporations and the executives who make the key decisions. But his comments appear to reflect frustration with what he perceives as a lack of investment in some sectors of the economy.

Statistics Canada numbers show Canadian non-financial corporations with a cash hoard of $526-billion at the end of the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 43 per cent since the recession ended in 2009.

Some firms have staggering amounts of cash on hand. Suncor Energy Inc. has $5.2-billion, Teck Resources Ltd. has $3.6-billion, Inmet Mining Corp. has $2.7-billion, and Bombardier Inc. has $2.5-billion, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg.

Every company’s situation is different, and some are preparing to build new mines or factories or to dole money out in research and development. Others are spending aggressively as cash pours in. Magna International Inc., for instance, which has about $1.4-billion (U.S.) in cash on hand, has increased capital spending to record levels this year.

“I don’t see cash on our balance sheet as ‘dead money’ at all,” said Magna’s chief financial officer, Vince Galifi. “We intend to deploy cash as the appropriate opportunities arise. And we are a strong cash generator, so we expect to be able to put cash to use and still be able to maintain our balance sheet strength. ...”

Some executives said it is no surprise that their compatriots are cautious about spending, especially since many companies had near-death experiences in the recession – or thought their sources of financing might collapse.

“Corporate guys have come through such a frightening scare in 2009, where they were getting out of bed every day not knowing if they were going to have a bank,” said Matt Campbell, CEO of Rocky Mountain Dealerships Inc., a Calgary-based chain of construction and agriculture equipment dealers.

“A lot of people are still pretty concerned that a second shoe might drop with Europe....And what happens if the U.S. goes back into recession? These people are just being prudent.”

Mr. Campbell said it is odd that Mr. Carney, who has a reputation as a conservative central banker, is pushing companies to spend more freely. “Canada survived through this crisis because [companies] had reserves and equity,” he said. “The last I checked, the best equity is cash in the bank.”

Others say Mr. Carney is right, although returning money to shareholders through dividends or share buy-backs should take a back seat to investing for growth.

“I would agree that Canadian companies need to spend more and invest more on productivity to become more globally competitive,” said David MacDonald, CEO of Toronto technology services firm Softchoice Corp. Part of the problem, he said, is that many Canadian institutional investors are very conservative, and encourage companies to pay dividends or buy back shares rather than investing in growth.

Andrew Snelgrove, CFO of Halifax-based investment company Clarke Inc., said many undervalued acquisition targets are available for companies that have cash and are willing to spend it. “There are opportunities out there to take advantage of,” he said. “Sitting on cash is not a great idea right now.”

Mr. Carney’s remarks reflect his broad worry that Canada is doing too little to become a competitive force in the global economy. He reiterated his view that Canadians are spending money on houses that should be used for more “productive” purposes, and that the country trades too little with the fast-growing emerging markets.

“We cannot grow indefinitely by relying on Canadian households increasing their borrowing relative to income,” Mr. Carney said in his speech.

The central bank chief dismissed the CAW’s contention that the Canadian dollar’s strength is hurting exports. On the contrary, Bank of Canada research suggests that the dollar’s appreciation accounts for only about 20 per cent of Canada’s export decline. The main reason Canada is running a trade deficit is that it is “overexposed” to the United States, where gross domestic product will be $1-trillion smaller in 2015 than pre-crisis estimates, Mr. Carney said.

“We cannot devalue ourselves to prosperity,” Mr. Carney said in his speech, his first address to a labour group. The audience stood and applauded twice during the speech – even though the CAW says the level of the dollar, which Mr. Carney can influence, is damaging the manufacturing industry.

- With reports from Carrie Tait and David Parkinson


Mr. Carney's remarks were, also, a thinly veiled "shot across the bows" for Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty. One of the roots of our productivity malaise was John Diefenbaker's decision, in 1962, to devalue our dollar to, in his words, create "a tremendous upsurge'' in exports (to the USA). It didn't really work - not as well as a more productive industrial sector would have, over the long term - but it pacified his critics and, despite Liberal opposition to it, became national 'policy' for about 40 years.
 
526 BCAD does sound like a lot, but when Suncor or Teck are involved in projects and acquisitions valued in the BCAD range a 5 BCAD float doesn't sound excessive, IMO.  4 projects of 5 BCAD (an oilsands plant, a new field, a couple of pipelines) going over budget by 25% would eat that up, or a single acquisition coupled with a radical fall in oil prices from Brent prices ($116) to West Texas ($97) could blow it away in a flash.

Mark Carney has made his name by boldly supporting conservative policies.  To be sure that required him to take gambles and he is to be commended for that.

However it appears to me that he is encouraging others to take gambles of a different type than he would be willing to undertake in their shoes.

None of which serves to undermine the underlying argument that productivity does need to be enhanced and there is money available to allow companies to chip away at that over time by continuous improvement of their plants and processes.  But that doesn't require A Great Leap Forward.  It requires a slow, pawky, Long March.
 
If companies are hoarding cash reserves as a contingency against political developments over the next few months, particularly Nov-Jan to see what the US does with its fiscal situation, then taken together these two messages from the bureaucratic suits do not make sense:
1) Spend your money.
2) If the US fiscal cliff and Euro problems aren't properly solved, watch out!
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I know everyone gets bored to tears when I mention productivity but it does matter. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is report that quotes Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on how and why corporate Canada is screwing us, in productivity terms:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/free-up-dead-money-carney-exhorts-corporate-canada/article4493091/
Free up 'dead money,' Carney exhorts corporate Canada

KEVIN CARMICHAEL, RICHARD BLACKWELL AND GREG KEENAN
The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Aug. 22 2012

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has taken a rare swing at corporate Canada, accusing companies of sitting on huge piles of “dead money” that should be invested productively or returned to investors.

Mr. Carney acknowledged that companies are wary about the global economy’s prospects because of debt problems in Europe, but he said Canadian executives are underestimating the resolve of the central bank and other authorities to guard against a financial crisis.
...
“We cannot grow indefinitely by relying on Canadian households increasing their borrowing relative to income,” Mr. Carney said in his speech.

The central bank chief dismissed the CAW’s contention that the Canadian dollar’s strength is hurting exports. On the contrary, Bank of Canada research suggests that the dollar’s appreciation accounts for only about 20 per cent of Canada’s export decline. The main reason Canada is running a trade deficit is that it is “overexposed” to the United States, where gross domestic product will be $1-trillion smaller in 2015 than pre-crisis estimates, Mr. Carney said.

“We cannot devalue ourselves to prosperity,” Mr. Carney said in his speech, his first address to a labour group. The audience stood and applauded twice during the speech – even though the CAW says the level of the dollar, which Mr. Carney can influence, is damaging the manufacturing industry.

- With reports from Carrie Tait and David Parkinson

Mr. Carney's remarks were, also, a thinly veiled "shot across the bows" for Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty. One of the roots of our productivity malaise was John Diefenbaker's decision, in 1962, to devalue our dollar to, in his words, create "a tremendous upsurge'' in exports (to the USA). It didn't really work - not as well as a more productive industrial sector would have, over the long term - but it pacified his critics and, despite Liberal opposition to it, became national 'policy' for about 40 years.


Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is a report of corporate Canada's response to Governor Carney:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/companies-hit-back-at-carney/article4496255/
Companies hit back at Carney

CARRIE TAIT, IAIN MARLOW
CALGARY, TORONTO — The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Aug. 23 2012

Some of the country’s largest corporations are striking back at Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, arguing he is wrong to assert that domestic companies are hindering economic growth by socking away cash.

Companies in a variety of industries, ranging from energy to technology, argue that they are doing just what Mr. Carney wants: Investing in major projects and handing money over to shareholders.

And for some struggling companies, a cash cushion is proving vital as they transition for hopefully better days ahead.

The spat started Wednesday, when Mr. Carney said the $526-billion Canadian companies have in their collective bank accounts is “dead money,” and that Canadian companies are being too cautious about investing for future expansion.

The issue highlights how urgently Mr. Carney wants to rev up growth at home, particularly with consumers saddled with large debt loads. But companies say they are doing their part, while being mindful that cash also insulates them should the economy sour further. Many companies were caught off guard by the global recession that battered corporate balance sheets a few years ago.

Open Text Corp., Canada’s largest software company, ended the fiscal year with about $560-million of cash on hand. Chief executive officer Mark Barrenechea said profitability has allowed the company to build up cash to invest in research and development and that Open Text has hardly been overly cautious with its money. Indeed, the firm has spent about $1-billion over the past four years on major acquisitions alone – spending $310-million this summer to buy EasyLink Services International Corp.

“We’ve demonstrated at Open Text that we’re very disciplined in cash allocation. … If [Mr. Carney’s] macro point is, ‘Put the cash to work and show a return on capital’ – those are principles we endorse.”

At the end of the first quarter, Canadian companies had 43 per cent more cash on hand than they did when the recession ended in 2009.

Many energy companies enjoy large cash positions, but they argue that their multibillion expansion projects, coupled with commodity price volitility, justify their bursting bank accounts.

Suncor Energy Inc., like many of its competitors, has costly growth plans. It intends to spend $7.5-billion in 2012, with half earmarked for growth projects. Expenses for labour and materials are rising. Suncor had $5.166-billion of cash at the end of June, and over $10-billion in long-term debt.

“For the first time in our history, we are in a position not only to grow production significantly, but also to steadily grow the cash we return to shareholders,” Steve Williams, Suncor’s CEO, said during his company’s second-quarter conference call at the end of July. “We have built a balance sheet that has demonstrated our ability to fund our growth program, while also funding significant dividend increases and share buybacks.”

“We have been very clear that our intention is to invest significant capital over the next decade in order to grow the company, while also steadily increasing the cash we return to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks,” said Sneh Seetal, a spokesperson for Suncor, said after Mr. Carney’s comments. “At the same time, we will maintain a prudent balance sheet that will see us through the inevitable cycles in commodity pricing.”

Suncor launched its first-ever stock buyback program in September, 2011, spending $1.4-billion to cancel over 46 million shares. That represents 3 per cent of the company’s float.

For BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., a healthy cash balance is giving the company time to try to retool after getting clobbered by competitors and turning unprofitable.

RIM had roughly $2.2-billion when it last reported, but the Waterloo, Ont.-based smartphone company is in the middle of an arduous restructuring and is attempting to shave $1-billion in savings by the end of the fiscal year. Now observers are closely watching RIM’s cash level to see if it can avoid burning through it as it funds severance costs and invests in new technology.

And natural gas giant Encana Corp.’s cash balance of $1.87-billion at the end of June appears big, but the company has obligations and investment needs.

“We have a perfectly good reason to have $1.8-billion in the bank,” said Encana spokesman Jay Averill. “That is what is going to fund our shift to [natural gas] liquids, pay our dividend, and repay debt” as natural gas prices remain weak.

Encana expects its debt to reach $7.7-billion by the end of 2012, according to a company presentation delivered in July. The company is under pressure as natural gas trades at low levels, and it wants to have $2.5-billion on hand by the end of the year.

Encana pays a 20-cent quarterly dividend – a payment is has fiercely guarded through years of depressed natural gas prices. Now, it is spending millions on exploring for products like butane and propane, known as natural gas liquids. The shift toward liquids comes with a big price tag.

“Companies need to manage their balance sheet well, and balance sheet strength is what helps give you that flexibility to reach you longer-term strategic plan,” Mr. Averill said.

But some money managers agree with Mr. Carney’s view that too many companies are not deploying their cash quickly enough.

Mason Granger, a fund manager at Sentry Investments in Toronto, believes significant piles of cash signal a lack of strategy, regardless of industry. He wants executives to hand the money over to investors.

“Hoarding cash is a tacit admission you don’t have projects and investments that will earn shareholders acceptable rate of returns,” he said. “So pay it back to shareholders.”


As corporate Canada and Kirkhill point out, there are valid reasons for corporate caution, but Carney is right, too: it is "dead money" and some of it can, surely, be invested now in ways (new tooling, for example) that will improve productivity - in fact a high dollar makes it more attractive to buy e.g. productivity enhancing technology from foreign sources.
 
While the numbers seem quite dramatic, Mark Carney failed to put things into perspective. The seemingly vast horde of cash is only a small part of the overall economic picture, as reported here:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/08/24/peter-foster-carneys-%C2%ADcorporate-cash-kerfuffle/

Peter Foster: Carney’s ­corporate cash kerfuffle

Peter Foster | Aug 24, 2012 10:40 PM ET
More from Peter Foster
 

Attacking corporations is always appealing from a populist perspective

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney must be congratulated for delivering an unwelcome message to the CAW. In his speech to the union on Wednesday, he told the membership that if they had problems, they weren’t — at least primarily — due to an overvalued Canadian dollar. His rejection of the notion that the Canadian economy might devalue its way to glory were bang on. But then he had to spoil it. Perhaps he thought that since he was delivering inconvenient truths to labour, he should also do a bit of corporate bashing.

Mr. Carney suggested during a press conference that Canadian corporations were holding too much cash and failing to diversify into emerging markets. He opined that high cash holdings might be due to companies not knowing what to do with their profits, but being reluctant to return them to shareholders. Thus he unleashed one of the hoariest critiques of “managerial capitalism.”

The notion that companies might be “hoarding” cash is not only ideologically mischievous and politically dangerous, it is also untenable. In fact, while companies are indeed sitting on more cash than at any time since the subprime crisis, that is in no way synonymous with hoarding, a primitive and emotive term suggesting taking more than your “fair share,” and thus depriving others (in fact, Mr. Carney may not have actually used the “H” word, although it was freely employed in reports of his musings).

Corporations constantly gauge a prudent level of cash holdings, depending on their particular circumstances and the perceived risks of the market more broadly. Moreover, the recent increase in cash is in no way synonymous with “failure to invest,” as figures released by the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters in the wake of the Carney kerfuffle suggest.

According to StatsCan, non-financial enterprises’ cash and short-term deposits did indeed rise by about 25% between 2008 and the first quarter of 2012, to $280 billion, but this figure, and the reasons for the increase, have to be put in perspective. This increase means that cash increased as a share of total assets 6.9% to 7.6%, hardly dramatic. When it comes to implications of non-investment, net capital assets in fact increased by $241 billion between 2008 and 2012 — four times as much as the alleged cash pile. There are, meanwhile, other factors that tend to contribute to an increase in cash holdings. These include the fact that other near-liquid assets such as accounts receivable and inventories have declined (from 20.2% of total assets in 2008 to 18.5% in 2012). Short-term borrowing has also increased since 2008, by $125-billion, or twice the alleged hoard.

These trends are similarly reflected in the manufacturing component of the non-financial sector. Net capital assets are up by about $40-billion, four times as much as the increase in cash in the period. Accounts receivable and inventories have fallen by the same amount — $10-billion — as the increase in cash.


The other prong of Mr. Carney’s corporate-policy pitchfork was to suggest that Canada needs an aggressive emerging-markets trade strategy, apparently to make up for the private sector’s lethargy. Certainly, as Mr. Carney noted, the Harper government is pursuing free trade agreements literally all over the map. Could the government be more determined to diversify energy exports to Asia? The barrier here is in no way lack of federal policy or corporate resolution, but environmental concerns that have been overhyped by those foreign-funded “radicals,” not to mention B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s attempt at playing the robber baron. Perhaps the governor might consider giving a speech to the David Suzuki Foundation.

In response to the backlash against his speech, Mr. Carney reportedly suggested that his remarks may have been taken out of context. But this is not the first time he has berated the corporate sector for failing to “step up to the plate.” In a speech last December, Mr. Carney declared that having played his own essential role in keeping the economy ticking along (with artificially low interest rates, admittedly in response to artificially low rates in the U.S.) he was “passing the baton” to the corporate sector, which now had to get off its duff and start running.

He claimed that corporations had panicked after the subprime crisis by looking after the health of their balance sheets rather than confronting Keynes’ “paradox of thrift” (the notion that the proverbial grasshopper was a better economist than the ant). He also declared that success in emerging markets was “not that difficult,” although he failed to expand on his insight. It seems that his assessment was purely academic since Mr. Carney has never been either a manufacturer or an exporter, except if you count the manufacture of banknotes, where his operation has had its own political-correctness control problems recently.

Attacking corporations is always appealing from a populist perspective, but it is also dangerous. It could easily feed into the notion that the Conservatives’ commendable reductions in corporate taxes have merely led to boosted profits being “socked away.” More fundamentally, the notion that major corporations might need Mr. Carney to tell them how much cash they should keep on hand, or which markets they should pursue, is risible. It was good to see so many prominent and successful Canadian companies — from Open Text to Suncor — prepared to put their head above the parapet and dare to tell Mr. Carney, subtly, that he should stick to his knitting.
 
Wonderful essay on the "Invisible Hand" of the market:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/09/14/peter-foster-biting-the-invisible-hand/

Peter Foster: Biting the Invisible Hand

Peter Foster | Sep 14, 2012 8:47 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 14, 2012 9:07 PM ET

Adam Smith’s concept involves co-ordination beyond comprehension

The increasing clout of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and of other nations’ sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) has led to a good deal of speculation about whether some new model of “visible hand” is about to replace Adam Smith’s invisible, free-market version. The immediate focus of Canadian interest is Chinese oil company CNOOC’s proposed $15-billion acquisition of Calgary-based Nexen. However, whatever corporate model CNOOC represents, it has no choice but to operate in the world of the Invisible Hand, a term widely used, little understood and all too often condemned.

Put succinctly, the Invisible Hand refers to the money-mediated “natural order” through which markets promote the efficient use of resources, reward innovation and service to the consumer, and co-ordinate vast amounts of commercial activity without a central plan. The metaphor has always been an object of vicious attack by statists, who fully realize, or subconsciously intuit, that its ministrations are fatal to their loudly trumpeted ambitions to control society for the public good.

Adam Smith in fact uses the term only once in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and once in The Wealth of Nations. In the former he notes how the rich tend to spread the wealth despite themselves, and, in the latter, to suggest how businessmen promote a good that is “no part of their intention.” Neither reference appears particularly celebratory. However, the term subsequently came to be identified more broadly with the evolved — and ever-evolving — system that Smith outlined.

The Invisible Hand has two paradoxical characteristics: it turns the pursuit of self-interest into social good, as exemplified by the services of Smith’s famous triumvirate of the butcher, brewer and baker; and it can’t be fine-tuned by government policy, although it requires a legal — and again naturally evolved — substructure.

It also involves co-ordination beyond comprehension. Smith noted that to feed, clothe and accommodate the average labourer of his own day required an amount of co-operation that “exceeds all computation.” Just look, he said, at the worker’s plain woollen coat, which “as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen.” Smith enumerated all the parts of the wool industry, all the merchants and carriers, all the elaborate machinery — from ships and mills to looms and furnaces — that were involved in the coat’s production.

One of the best-known modern expositions of the Invisible Hand is Leonard Read’s essay I, Pencil, in which a humble writing instrument outlines its own astonishing genealogy, and records that nobody on earth knows how to make it from scratch. Friedrich Hayek, too, gave a masterful exposition in his article The Use of Knowledge in Society, in which he noted that the issue wasn’t one of planning versus non-planning, but of who should do the planning, and at what level. Everybody plans according to their own perspectives and desires. This “knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place” cannot be captured by statistics or fed into economic plans, even by the brightest mandarins. The Invisible Hand’s genius is to utilize all this dispersed knowledge.

To rationalist intellectuals and policy wonks, the notion that they might not be able to improve on Smith’s order is profoundly objectionable. They inevitably find an eager audience in politicians seeking to justify their own existence. Moralists meanwhile invariably claim that the Invisible Hand is invalid because it is motivated by “greed” and leads to inequality. It is, at best, an instrument by which “private vice becomes public virtue.” Businessmen, too, inevitably dislike the idea of doing a good that is “no part of their intention,” and so flock to “corporate social responsibility” as a means of cleansing their hands of the sin of self-interest.

One hypocritical obeisance to the power of markets — embedded in the subversive concept of “sustainable development” — is to suggest that markets are indeed powerful and useful, but that prices are “all wrong.” This ignores the fact that the main function of the market is to set prices. Manipulated prices will always lead to shortages or surpluses. Governments’ attempts to price carbon emissions have turned into a festival of cheating, corruption and bureaucratic make-work.

As for SOEs and SWFs, they are not some new form of “state capitalism” (a contradiction in terms) but merely manifestations of the old inefficient and corrupt statist model. The fact that Chinese SOEs are reportedly run like regular corporations is in fact a tribute to the market, although the visible hand of Beijing always looms. Meanwhile, the significant role that private Chinese businesses have played in global consumer goods industries is an outstanding example of unleashing the Invisible Hand, not statism. The cadres inevitably remain none too keen on Adam Smith’s insight. Recently, Li Congjun, president of Xinhua News Agency, China’s official press agency, declared that the “visible hand” of government “is needed to manage the markets, revamp regulatory systems and bridle reckless behaviour.”

In fact, the visible hand of the state is all too obvious in many aspects of current economic mismanagement, from the disaster of green industrial strategy to the inevitable corruption of fiat money-based banking systems whose regulators are also their biggest customers. The Invisible Hand gives you the iPhone and the boom in shale gas and oil. The visible hand gives you the eurozone crisis and the Chevy Volt.

Apart from exploding panoptic macroprudential pretension, perhaps the main reason why the Invisible Hand is dismissed is that the “extended order of human co-operation,” as Hayek called it, and which Adam Smith first comprehensively elaborated, is such a recent phenomenon in human evolution. We may be natural traders but we are not natural economists. Meanwhile even some Nobel economists specialize in biting the hand.

The Invisible Hand tends to be rejected either because it is inconceivable or unacceptable, but as long as there is any degree of private initiative and voluntary interchange in a money economy, it is always there, waiting to give an invisible slap to interventionist pretense.
 
And how Canadians try to evade the heavy hand of government regulation, in this case by cross border shopping for eggs. (There has been a similar discussion in the NP about milk quotas and the perverse costs and incentives they cause, perhaps the best example in the milk quota story was the fact that milk producers cannot sell their milk to a new company trying to establish a yoghurt factory in Canada, but were forced to sell the milk for a lower cost for use as animal feed; the system screws the yoghurt producer, consumers who would like to buy a different product and the farmers it allegedly protects).

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/21/jesse-kline-whats-wrong-with-canadians-crossing-the-border-for-cheaper-groceries/

Jesse Kline: What’s wrong with Canadians crossing the border for cheaper groceries?

Jesse Kline | Sep 21, 2012 1:03 PM ET
More from Jesse Kline | @accessd

British Columbia egg producers are lashing out at consumers for cross-border shopping — but who can blame them?

Egg farmers in B.C. say they lose $3-million per year from people purchasing eggs in the United States, and that 2 million cartons of eggs are sold to Canadians by U.S. retailers each year. The industry argues that American producers can offer lower prices because they are so much larger. But the real culprit is Canada’s system of supply management, which ensures the domestic price of eggs is far higher than the international market price. A carton of eggs in Vancouver, for example, costs about $3.19, while a similar product in Washington state retails for $2.09.

The difference may not seem like a lot on first blush, but it can certainly add up. A recent report from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy estimated that Canada’s supply management policies — which affect the price of milk, dairy, chicken and eggs — cost the average Canadian family over $200 per year. This is felt most acutely by poorer people who are struggling to feed their families.

The difference in price can largely be attributed to the limits the Canadian government puts on how many eggs can be produced and imported. In 2007, Canadian farmers were allowed to produce 521.1 million dozen eggs. Of that total, a majority of the quota was given to producers in Ontario and Quebec. The Western provinces and the North West Territories were allotted just 31.5% of Canada’s total egg production in 2009 — a practice that keeps B.C.’s industry relatively small.

Limiting the supply of eggs in this manner ensures that prices stay higher than they would be under normal market conditions. In order to ensure that foreign imports don’t drive down the price, the Canadian government imposes import tariffs and quotas on foreign suppliers. Under our World Trade Organization obligations, Canada must import 21.4 million dozen eggs — a mere 4% of what we produce domestically. Any imports above the quota are taxed at a whopping 168%, ensuring foreign competitors are unable to compete.

With policies in place to keep prices high, it’s no wonder Canadians are increasingly venturing across the border for lower-cost groceries — it’s in their interest to do so. The worst part is that millions of Canadians are forced to pay higher prices for food so that the fewer than 1,000 egg farmers across the country can receive high prices for their products.

One of those producers is Capella Farm located in Surrey, B.C. A spokesperson for the farm recently told reporters that people “have to support the farmers here in B.C.,” as they produce “good products.” If their eggs truly are better than those produced south of the border, then the government should lift the quota and allow them to expand their operation. If not — and the only way to support such businesses is through corporate welfare programs that come at the expense of the rest of the country — then the land, people and equipment they employ could surely be put to more productive uses.

This all makes me wonder whether Humpty Dumpty was sitting on the wall to try and get over international trade barriers. Fortunately, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could rectify this situation by dismantling Canada’s supply management system.

National Post
 
ERC is right about there needing to be a "centrist" opposition party in the wings when the current government becomes tired and out of ideas and energy. The NDP isn't showing any real signs of moving towards the center, as their economic illiteracy continued to amaze:

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/09/flights-of-fancy-lefts-approach-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ABearsRant+%28A+Bear%27s+Rant%29

Flights Of Fantasy - The Left's Approach To The Economy

If you're planning to read this post, you probably should get a coffee because it's a long one.

Canada’s socialist New Democratic Party is worried about Canada’s trade imbalance. I know this because their leader, Thomas Mulcair, has waxed poetically in another of his apoplectic fits as he blamed the government for this newfound crisis. He is positively livid about the fact that Canada is currently importing more than it is exporting.

Sometimes, he gets so livid his face turns red and I worry about his blood pressure rising to the point that he becomes dizzy and might trip over his sanctimonious rhetoric and hurt himself.

Earlier this year, he was positively livid about the fact that western provinces like Alberta were doing very well while Ontario and Quebec and were struggling economically. Mr. Mulcair, in what has become the mantra of the left these days, blamed the successful economies in the west for the failure of those who mismanaged their affairs in the east. Sounds like so many today who blame their personal plight on those who have succeeded doesn’t it?

Blame and envy are something at which the left has become very accomplished.

The Ontario and Quebec Liberal governments who had bought their way into power on borrowed money weren’t responsible for their economic woes according to Mr. Mulcair; it was the success of the resource driven economies in the west. It wasn’t absurd entitlement and meddling policies of the left-leaning governments that were responsible, it was the successful governance of the Conservative government in Alberta.

That argument sounded good but didn’t fly very well unfortunately because a rather significant wave of inconvenient facts in both Parliament and the media undermined Mr. Mulcair's carefully crafted criticism..  Undeterred, Mr. Mulcair has switched course and is now blaming the state of things on Canada’s trade imbalance.

Mr. Mulcair is nothing if not flexible and willing to embrace change on a moment’s notice.

While I’m sure that most of us welcome the NDP’s newfound interest in the benefits of trade to our economy, I think it would be prudent if they took the time to learn how it all works before jumping into the debate.

The NDP seem to want to have it both ways. They criticize the government for negotiating free trade with Europe and parts of Asia while criticizing the government that we don’t have enough markets for our exports and they positively deplore our free trade agreement with the United States.

The NDP have, in fact, consistently voted against every trade deal negotiated by the government over the years, including one with Liechtenstein. They were quite concerned about the negative impact of trade with a nation that has a population of 35,000 and whose major exports are ceramics, sausage casings and false teeth.

One shudders to think of what will happen to Canada’s sausage casing industry now that our government has negotiated a trade deal with Liechtenstein.

The simple reality is that trade is a two-way street. You can’t trade by yourself. Trading with yourself could be called hoarding and doesn’t work very well. You have to have someone to trade with and if they aren’t prepared or able to trade with you because their economies are in the toilet, then there is going to be some kind of slowdown in trade activity.

Apparently Mr. Mulcair was so focused on blaming other Canadians for the mess in Ontario and Quebec while trying to save the sausage casing industry, he didn't notice that most of the world is in economic recession.

Canada’s economy is quite stable, in fact it is outperforming all countries in the G7. This means that we have stuff to trade and the ability to buy but some of our trading partners are in less stable economic shape than we are. Hence, we’re importing more right now than we’re exporting. Mr. Mulchair and his NDP would shout that we wouldn’t have to import so much if we manufactured more and he’s correct. You can’t manufacture more, however, when government tax and energy policies along with unions salary demands have priced manufacturing jobs right out of the market.

The simple truth is that manufacturers are leaving the country, taking their jobs with them to countries where labour and operating costs are less expensive.

The fact is that if it costs more to manufacture something, that cost will be reflected in the selling price which affects whether or not people will buy it. It is difficult to trade Canadian manufactured goods when so many of them are more expensive to produce thanks to high labour costs, than those same goods can be produced elsewhere.

It is one of the great weaknesses of the left, that it has never understood that government does not control the economy. In fact, most politicians on the left don’t fully understand how economies work at all . That is evident by the interfering policies they implement.

In Quebec, for example, the new PQ government is moving to protect Quebec-owned corporations from foreign takeover. This is in response to a recent offer by Lowe’s to purchase Rona, a large Quebec-owned hardware/lumber chain. The government refers to Rona as a “champion of Quebec business”. Some champion. Over the past five years, Rona’s shares have plummeted 48% which is more than four times the drop in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index over the same period. It makes you wonder how well the non-champions in Quebec are performing and how much that's going to cost taxpayers.

Fortunately, the new socialist PQ premier has reassured us that both she and her new finance minister, a former academic, both have MBA's so I guess we can all sleep better tonight.

The Quebec Government authorized the purchase of shares in Rona to artificially prop up the share price. Who pays for that? Why taxpayers of course.

And that’s the problem with the left’s approach to the economy.

They introduce policies that negatively impact the market which hurts shareholders which include every day folks like you and I, as well as, many public sector and private pension funds. That drives capital to other, more attractive investment opportunities, which undermines economic growth. This has a negative impact on the companies that the government was trying to protect for political optics which results in more tax money being spent to prop up those companies as we saw in the bail out of the auto sector in 2008/09. It undermines investor confidence which reduces business development and job growth.

It also discourages new business start-up and foreign investment which further impedes job growth and economic prosperity.

The government of the United States is shutting down coal plants at the cost of thousands of jobs at precisely the time when unemployment is a huge problem in America and without a plan in place to replace those jobs. It bans off shore drilling in the United States but provides billions in support of the same thing in Brazil. Only the left would spend billions to prop up in another country what it bans in its own, providing jobs to that foreign country rather than its own unemployed citizens.

It was the same government that declined to approve the Keystone pipeline which would have provided thousands of high-paying American jobs and a stable supply of oil from a friendlier ally than many from whom America now depends on for oil imports.

This is done to win favour with the environmental movement that love sustainable energy and who are as clueless about the economy as fruit flies.

Sustainable energy is the darling of the left with claims of new jobs and cleaner environments. For the foreseeable future it is nothing but wishful thinking, a flight of fantasy that was tried in Europe and which is failing. Even the NDP's much vaunted cap and trade policy has been tried only to result in increased cost, slower economic growth and outright corruption.

The problem with sustainable energy is that it remains too expensive and unable to meet industrial demands. Millions were spent by the Obama administration on Solyndra to advance solar energy only to see the company go bankrupt, taking its promise of cleaner energy and a half billion of tax payer money with it.

In Ontario, the government squanders billions on wind and solar which is seeing companies paying absurd increases in energy costs. In some cases, increases under Ontario’s Clean Energy act have been upwards of 1000% and that, my gentle gum drops, causes companies to shut down and/or relocate which costs jobs which cause economic hardship and undermines prosperity.

Ontario's economy, which just a decade ago was the powerhouse of Canada, isn't even the envy of Greece these days and most of it is the fault of bad economic management by a Liberal government and it's fuzzy economic policies.

Quite frankly, if the objective is simply cleaner air, the left’s program will work well because in the end, nobody will be able to afford to live here and everyone will have moved away leaving a big empty place with lots of clean air.

The really stupid thing about the Clean Air Act in Ontario is that of the top 10 cities with the cleanest air in the world, Canada already had eight of them. Considering how the left has screwed up our economies, I would suggest that stupidity was a bigger problem than clean air.

It almost makes you long for the good old days when the Liberal Party of Canada simply stole money from taxpayers as they did during AdScam. At least we didn’t have to deal with all this pretentious, self-serving and uniformed rhetoric every day and it really didn't hurt the economy or cost jobs.

Clean energy, like fair trade and equitable labour practices, are all laudable goals and should be part of a nation’s long-term economic planning but the left doesn’t plan. It reacts. It grasps at trends and politicizes issues to the point where more damage is done by their policies than by simply leaving things alone.

Studies have shown that prosperity has consistently been higher during periods of reduced government interference than during those periods where government increased its presence through regulation and control; but that doesn’t deter the left. Despite repeated historical failure, it persists in its absurd attempts to do what cannot be done, control economies and socially engineer societies.

Government doesn’t belong in business any more than business belongs in government. It is government’s job to provide a level and fair playing field with sufficient regulation and safe-guards to protect investors, employees and the public and then get the hell out of the way. It is the responsibility of business to make a profit and in so doing, provide jobs and prosperity for the country.

The sooner the left realizes that, the better off more of us will be. Don’t hold your breath, however, as people like Thomas Mulcair have shown time and time again, when it comes to the economy the left are slow learners.

I told you this was going to be a long post.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear
Read more at http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/09/flights-of-fancy-lefts-approach-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ABearsRant+(A+Bear%27s+Rant)#zcmglem3q2sJAtRb.99
 
And more on how the dysfunctional marketing board quota system distorts the market. Making $1000 for driving cases of cheese across the border? It is surprising that we don't here much more of this, but smugglers are hardly going to brag about it and I doubt people wo are saving large amounts of money will cpmplin much either:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/09/24/peter-foster-the-war-on-cheese/

Peter Foster: The war on cheese

Peter Foster | Sep 24, 2012 9:40 PM ET
More from Peter Foster

Adam Smith praised the trade of smuggler, now moving into dairy

French president Charles de Gaulle is reported to have asked “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” The question was surreal, but then cheese tends to invite the absurd. The Monty Python troupe provided two outstanding examples, first in their classic sketch of the cheese-less “Cheese Shop,” then in their movie, Life of Brian, in which somebody mishears part of the Sermon on the Mount as “Blessed are the cheesemakers.” (Significantly, the movie promoted no Christian riots.)

This week, cheese, while retaining its less-than-serious veneer, became a cross-border issue with an even wider bearing on Canada’s international trade future.

According to a CBC report, Niagara Regional Police in Ontario have been doing the rounds of pizza parlours attempting to sniff out counterfeit mozzarella. There are even rumours that “dirty” cops are bringing contraband over the border, allegedly making $1,000 to $2,000 a trip by jamming cases of brick cheese into their vehicles and selling it to pizzerias and restaurants in the Niagara peninsula.

Mario Sebastiano, owner of Super Mario’s pizza in Port Colborne, reportedly said that he was approached two years ago by a Fort Erie man offering black-market U.S. product. This unnamed man, and alleged police accomplices, are the focus of the current probe. According to Mr. Sebastiano, “He was gonna sell me a case for 150 bucks — normally it’s $240.” Mr. Sebastiano said he turned the offer down “because it was illegal — and the contraband cheese was inferior.”

The cheese caper came to light as the result of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of alleged steroid and prescription-drug smuggling by a Niagara region police officer. Apart from possible local police involvement, there are two issues here: one confirms the unintended results of beefing up Homeland Security. You start out looking for al-Qaeda and wind up hunting down smuggled cheese. The other issue is exactly why anybody would be smuggling U.S. cheese into Canada.

The answer, of course, is Canada’s farm supply management system, which makes the Niagara cheese caper part of something bigger than a peccadillo on a pizza. The system lumbers Canadians with higher prices for dairy products, chickens and eggs via quotas and hefty import tariffs. It appears much less of a domestic irritant than it should be. However, it has become an international issue now that Canada has joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been “forced” to put supply management on the negotiating table.

The TPP is seen as crucial to Canada’s trade aspirations. The bloc now consists of nine members: the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Vietnam, Singapore, Chile, Peru and Malaysia. Mexico is joining, and if Japan signs on too, it would represent a market of 775 million people with a combined GDP of US$26 trillion.

Since Mr. Harper is a free trader who recently succeeded in scrapping the wheat board, one might surmise that he was not entirely unhappy about being “pressured” to dismantle a system whose beneficiaries are a few thousand quota farmers in Ontario and Quebec — and bureaucrats — but whose victims are not only millions of Canadian consumers, but the whole country’s trade prospects.

Canada has significantly reduced its agricultural subsidies in the past 25 years, and now provides a level of support below the OECD average. However, dairy, poultry and egg farming remain tightly regulated and protected. The TPP’s major agri-food players — the U.S., Australia and New Zealand — have objected strongly to the Canadian system, which is in fact not good for the long-term health of domestic farmers, who have become more concerned with protecting the value of their expensive quotas than improving efficiencies and seeking export markets, which the system tends to price them out of anyway.

Nobody likes competition if they can avoid it, but it is the only sure route to the economic growth that serves both job creation and the consumer, who has always had a soft spot for smugglers, as did Adam Smith, the father of free trade.

The smuggler, wrote Smith, would have been “in every respect, an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.”

Smith noted that the higher the duty, the greater the incentive to smuggle. Hence tariffs of 200%-300% — as in the case of Canadian diary products — provide an obvious temptation, although this is offset by the low value-to-bulk ratio of cheese. He also noted that high tariffs lead to the corruption of officials, although the Niagara case appears an extremely minor example of that, if it is a case at all.

If the cheese charges against the unnamed Niagara policemen are true, they may well be discharged from the service, but there is future waiting for them in the import-export business. They obviously have some entrepreneurial flare. Drugs are another issue, but if the “war on drugs” has been an egregious failure, how ridiculous is an effective war on imported cheese?
 
Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, says that the federal government has its fiscal house in order but the provinces are not doing as well according to this article which is shared under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-doing-well-but-provinces-in-trouble-budget-watchdog-says/article4572217/
Ottawa doing well, but provinces in trouble, budget watchdog says

JULIAN BELTRAME
Ottawa — The Canadian Press

Published Thursday, Sep. 27 2012

Ottawa’s cost-cutting measures have put it on a sound fiscal track for the future, but the provinces are left holding the bag, says Canada’s budget watchdog.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page’s latest long-term projection on government finances suggests Ottawa has little to fear from the loss of revenue and rising costs tied to the aging population.

Mr. Page also judges the Canada Pension Plan and Quebec Pension Plan fiscally sound.

But the report, released Thursday, shows provinces and municipalities adding so much debt over the next 70 years or so they would resemble Greece and Italy if something is not done.

The report calculates that provinces and their municipalities have a fiscal gap of about 2 per cent of gross domestic product now – or $36-billion – and by 2086 will have debt worth 350 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, Ottawa will be in a structural surplus.

Mr. Page cautions that this is a “what if” scenario and is not a forecast, but adds that governments need to be aware of the fiscal track they are following to ensure they make the right policy decisions.

“We’re not saying in the report that the provinces have to panic and start taking measures right now,” Mr. Page said in an interview.

“But in terms of dealing with aging demographics…if they wait five years the gap goes from something like 2 to 2.3 (per cent of GDP). If you wait 10 years it goes to 2.6. If you wait 20 years it’s well over 3 per cent [and] it starts increasing exponentially.”

In essence, the federal government has already taken “decisive” measures to address the fiscal gap, Mr. Page said.

While he has been critical of the Harper government in the past for failing to acknowledge it was in a structural deficit several years ago – for which he took personal blow-back – Mr. Page said Ottawa has acted to rectify the situation.

In the past two years, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty put a limit to growth on health transfers to provinces, essentially froze program spending for five years, and raised the age of eligibility for benefits under Old Age Security to 67 from 65.

The change in health transfers alone is responsible for about three-quarters of the provincial fiscal gap, Mr. Page says, or about $25-billion in fiscal room.

“Health care is the Pac-Man that will eat up their budgets,” he said of the provincial situation.

He notes health-care spending has been rising at about 7 per cent a year for the last decade, and he projects it will rise on average by 5 per cent going forward. But even that is too much, given that the expected trend speed of the economy will slow to between 3 or 4 per cent in nominal terms.

“You can’t have health-care spending growing that much faster than GDP and not have some type of sustainability problem when health care is such a big part of your budget.”

Not all provinces have a fiscal gap. The report does not separate out resource rich provinces like Alberta from the have-nots, so the 2-per-cent estimate is in fact larger for provinces like Ontario and Quebec and some in the Atlantic region.

Mr. Page said the provinces with a structural deficit will find it more difficult than Ottawa to unload their problems, in part because they can’t peg health care expenses to GDP, as Flaherty has.

As well, demographics impact provinces more than Ottawa because as the population ages, health-care costs are expected to explode.

Some provinces have begun to pinch in other areas in anticipation of the coming squeeze. Quebec attempted to raise tuition fees, triggering massive protests.

Following receipt of a report from economist Don Drummond in February, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty introduced a two-year wage freeze on all public servants, among other measures.

Mr. Page’s report says the provinces do have time to react. Because of current measures and sustained, if weak, growth in the economy, he calculates overall government debt as a percentage of GDP will fall to 31.9 per cent in the next 20 years from the current 53.5 per cent.

But that’s not true of all governments. When you put the provinces together, their debt as a percentage of GDP starts rising, albeit slowly in a few years.


The problem is simple: we, Canadians, get too much "free" health care; more money must be found but we, Canadians, do not want higher taxes and governments appear unable to make the health care system much more efficient. So, somehow or other, some outside money must come into the system. From where? The obvious answer is "business." Why should business put lots and lots and lots of money into health services? To make money. Premiers: are you reading this?
 
I disagree.

This mantra of extending lives to the nth degree, treat everybody to the max is unsustainable....
 
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