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angus555
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Loachman said:http://nationalpost.com/opinion/jack-mintz-another-nep-fiasco-looms-as-westerners-suffer-for-trudeaus-energy-follies/wcm/a219f664-9715-4f0f-9ac6-67abfecf9b0e
Jack Mintz: Another NEP fiasco looms as Westerners suffer for Trudeau’s energy follies
Thanks to government policy and indecision, American consumers enjoying subsidies paid for by Western Canadians
"The prime minister calls the dispute between Alberta and British Columbia ... a "disagreement between provinces." That ignores the constitutional role the federal government has in interprovincial transportation and trade. Alberta’s Premier Rachel Notley is right: This is as much a fight between B.C. and the federal government as it is between Alberta and B.C."
"... perhaps the Trudeau government is quietly hoping the pipeline’s owner, Kinder Morgan, gives up in frustration, for “business reasons,” as other resource project proponents have done recently after enduring endless regulatory and political setbacks."
"The NEP, which hit the West just as commodity prices were falling, led to one of the largest income transfers in history, from the West to Central and Eastern Canada. Western energy producers were forced to pay an export tax to fund subsidies to make life cheaper for energy-guzzling consumers to the east. This time, the income isn’t being transferred from the West to Eastern Canada. It’s being transferred from Canada to the United States."
Funny the author put Norway in a positive light in an argument against NEP.
Its heavily taxed, regulated, and nationalized petroleum industry is responsible for the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.
The whole impetus for Petro-Canada and later the NEP was the fact the Canadian oil industry was geared towards benefiting the US.
It was economic nationalism in a country that was and still is dominated by provincial thinking.