Thread

Canada welcomes EU proposal to become 'associate member'

284 points · 354 comments · witweb

WarmWash · 1789653662 · focus · HN ↗
Meanwhile, Alberta, where all of Canada's "energy security" is located, is holding a secession referendum on Oct 19.
The chances of Canada getting everyone to go along with this are close to zero. (As are the chances of Alberta actually seceding).
It's just political theater
1. AlexandrB · 1789654938 · focus · HN ↗
  Giving Alberta a market where they can sell LNG might get them on board, but this would also require a bunch of new infrastructure (pipelines? ports?) that I suspect the Canadian government will not want built.
  It would be lovely to get Europe off of Russian energy imports.
  1. fidotron · 1789655760 · focus · HN ↗
    One of the major problems of Canada is it's essentially a line of provinces east-west. It means you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked.
    This has bred an economy of rent seekers and real estate at the expense of almost everything else. There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all, which leads to a sort of self loathing complex with the ones that stay; they are utterly mystified by the idea that anyone with any skills/talent whatsoever would want to move to Canada, it's truly mind boggling. (This is why I prefer Quebec - it's got enough people in it that really like Quebec a lot).
    llm_nerd · 1789656114 · focus · HN ↗
    > you cannot simply route around a province with unreasonable demands, everyone must be placated, and the resource region of Alberta is seriously landlocked.
    Retconned horseshit that emanates from idiot chambers.
    The US is a big country next door, and historically the two economies and trade have been very tightly integrated. So Alberta hooks into the US pipeline system, as cooperative players in a continental energy system, and so does Ontario. There was never a critical reason to make significant East/West pipelines, in the same way that the US has loads of LNG export terminals (they were actually converted import terminals), and being connected to their LNG system meant it made little sense to spend billions of new terminals.
    Not to mention some geographic issues. Running a pipeline through the Canadian shield is not a trivial matter. Possible, but it's much easier though the flyover US states.
    And most hilarious of all about this, the reviled national energy program (NEP) -- you know, the one that 0% of Albertans understand but they're sure it was to screw them -- was the federal government proposing a national pipeline system. Alberta had a massive tantrum about it. Instead Alberta was constrained to selling oil at a massive discount to the US for decades.
    >There are reasons that the best and brightest of Canada enthusiastically leave en masse to the place that Canadians claim to detest most of all
    ROFL. Good god. The fact that you're in Quebec, and you celebrate Quebec (by far the most dysfunctional part of the country, largely a welfare state propped up by the rest of Canada, primarily Ontario), has to be the most hilarious part of this comical fan-fiction nonsense.
    Now you seem to have a hilarious take on Canada, but in the real world the "West" anointed the US as the centre of power (the largest population base, unharmed by two world wars in a row). This means that people from everywhere generally centralized there, for media, for technology, and so on. Thanks to the current idiocracy and the accelerating decline of that country, the whole thing has reversed.
    happythomist · 1789660004 · focus · HN ↗
    > And most hilarious of all about this, the reviled national energy program (NEP) -- you know, the one that 0% of Albertans understand but they're sure it was to screw them -- was the federal government proposing a national pipeline system. Alberta had a massive tantrum about it.
    Yes, the NEP proposed extending some natural gas pipelines. You neglected to mention that it also imposed price controls and new taxes on oil and gas revenues.
    Marc Lalonde, the minister responsible, literally said after the fact that the goal of the program was to shift oil and gas revenue from the provinces and industry to Ottawa:
    "The major factor behind the NEP wasn't Canadianization or getting more from the industry or even self sufficiency," [...] "The determinant factor was the fiscal imbalance between the provinces and the federal government [...] "Our proposal was to increase Ottawa's share appreciably, so that the share of the producing provinces would decline significantly and the industry's share would decline somewhat."
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program

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