It will be former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s legacy. Forget free trade with Europe. Forget the adulation and fawning over him by the G8. Stephen Harper will be remembered for causing the greatest economic crash in Canadian history. Canada’s economy started to crumble when the Chinese state oil company CNOOC announced in early 2016 that it is dumping its investment in Canadian tar sands oil.
And there is nothing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can do about it. Since China agreed to the proposed Pan-Asiatic environmental restrictions in the 2015 Asian Accord, it has been cleaning house and eliminating pollution. From being one of the most polluting countries, it has set anti-pollution standards that are the envy of the rest of the world. The announcement of the pull-out from the tar sands also happens to follow the proving of the vast oil reserves under the Gobi Desert in Mongolia that can easily be retrieved with environmentally safe fracking.
In the United States, the Keystone XL pipeline is under court order not to ship any bitumen or bitumen-based products. While former President Barack Obama had permitted the pipeline to be completed through the American Midwest, the new Republican President is sticking by his environmental promises to ‘Let no pollution on U.S. soil.’ This will curtail shipments through the Texas Gulf ports to certain non-environmentalist African countries.
Since an emboldened eco-terrorist group set fire to the Irving Oil tanker loading docks at Saint John, New Brunswick, there have been no East Coast shipments of bitumen. Whether Irving Oil will even consider rebuilding the docks depends on negotiations with insurance companies on the potential for future environmentalist action?
Since the shut down of tar sands operations in Alberta has thrown tens of thousands out of work in that province, layoffs and business bankruptcies have been reverberating across Canada. And with the loss of the huge oil tankers coming into Kitimat and Vancouver, the Northern Gateway and dual Kinder Morgan pipelines have been forced to shut down and business layoffs have become a daily routine throughout British Columbia.
A sign of the times are the newspaper advertisements in Eastern Canada for skilled workers to work on temporary visas at U.S. and Mexican plants. The employers like the Canadian work ethic and skills but the Canadians hired must be willing to work for 15 per cent less than local workers in those right-to-work jurisdictions.
All in all, it is a fitting tribute to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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