Apolitical Staples

Regarding the “tax subsidization to the tune of a billion dollars a year to big oil and gas companies”, I don’t see that as a big deal.

Oil and gas revenues go to the provinces, therefore it should be up to the provinces to offer subsidies if they want to encourage the industry.

It shouldn’t be up to the Feds to do what is seen as regional pandering. Agreeing to this wouldn’t hurt the CPC much.

Cheers, lance

It’s the phrase “end tax subsidization” that has me wondering.

If Layton means get rid of corporate welfare, yes, of course there’s plenty of room to cut a deal. (As the CPC ought to favour that in principle, anyway.)

If he is using this as a weasel word for “raise taxes on big gas and oil”, perhaps not so much.

This illustrates either cluelessness or very sophisticated weaseling on Layton’s part. The CO2 emissions from a coal plant can’t really be cut, except by burning less coal. So, is Layton proposing a federal law which says that, eg Ontario, can only run its coal plants at 70% capacity? Or is he really talking about emissions, and planning to de-emphasize CO2? As for oil and gas subsidies, perhaps Harper will do a deal here too: eliminate the “subsidies”, but also cut federal royalties (which are a special tax paid only by oil and gas producers) by the same amount.

I think Layton’s position on coal plants is that he wants them closed and replaced by alternative energy sources, probably wind power.

Lance,

Ending so-called corporate welfare is one of the few areas the CPC and NDP agree, in principle. The devil might be in the details, however. We shall see.

Ben, Layton has always been clear that “end tax subsidization” means getting rid of the special tax breaks that the oil and gas industry get over and above the regular corporate tax structure. I recognize your libertarian slant on this, but he is recognizing that an oil company should be treated, tax wise, like any other corporation. We ought not to be paying for parts of oil and gas pipelines either, considering the industry has been making record profits for about 4 years now. This of this as refusing to fund oil and gas profits the same way the Cons refused to fund the Status of Women…

Closing coal plans is a good idea. But Kyoto’s targets start in 2008. I don’t see them all being closed and replaced by one year from now.

A bit more:

“The third point has more to do with CO2 reduction but does Layton seriously believe that the Conservatives will go along with that?”

Greg, I was at the Sens-Flyers game yesterday, in the corporate box with some pretty big name clients from across Ontario. Needless to say, with temperatures reaching 10 degrees in January, the subject of the weather came up during the intermissions.

Well to a person, everyone in attendance - from the client CEO, to the Partner from our company, through to the few of us at the Consultant level - agreed that global warming was real, was a significant problem and should be dealt with.

We all exchanged stories of how much the weather patterns have changed in our lifetimes. Most people had seen “An Inconvenient Truth” (except me, oddly enough) and loved it.

Now I don’t say this to say the global warming is real - the science says that. But this really opened my eyes to how important the environment is in the electorate right now, to everyone at all levels. I can guarantee that the room was filled with supporters of all parties, mostly centre-right. People you would expect to fully support the Conservative denying of the problem were the ones telling me how AIT was brilliant and full of great information.

All of this to say that unless the Cons do support reductions in CO2, they will be gone after the next election. Ignore it at your peril. On Saturday, I would not have believed this. Today I do.

Mcguinty’s position vis a vis auto emission is the mirror of Klein’s: don’t single us out. Roll some pain for Alberta into the mix and I think he would be far more compliant.

Fair enough — if they were industry-specific tax breaks, it would make sense to normalize the status of oil and gas corporations. Corporate welfare isn’t a good thing.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard enough mealy-mouthed euphemisms for “let’s expand the state and tax more” that I’m immediately skeptical about these expressions when they come from the left side of the spectrum.

I think Layton’s position on coal plants is that he wants them closed and replaced by alternative energy sources, probably wind power.

The part about energy debates that is the most fun is that the discussions mostly take place on the qualitative rather than quantitative plane. “Do this instead of that. It’s so easy.”

Does anyone run the numbers any more? (Yeah, I’m going to go looking. But maybe someone else could, too.)

Cosh addresses the quantities in a national post column here:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=7235a029-e0cb-479d-aeb6-ef19c4fc32f5

Unfortunately, balancing the power grid will present an ongoing problem with alternative sources of energy.

I’m sure there are ways around it, there always are in these things. You just have to actually figure it out.

Despite what you may think, new electricity generation doesn’t come on with a flick of the switch. McGuinty has had to push out the phase out of coal plants indefinitely. You physically can’t replace that type of generation in 4 years, regardless of cost. If you don’t replace it, you shut it down and buy coal produced electricity from the States or you increase the price of electricity so that you reduce your peak demand by 30% ie. tell industry to leave the province of Ontario.

The two biggest things the federal government could do to reduce greenhouse gas emission GROWTH is provide loan guarantees for 3 new CANDU nuclear stations; 2 in Ontario, 1 in the oilsands.

Or they could ban any industry with a smokestack.

The CPC should look into reducing oil subsidies on an ideological basis. Perhaps a modest, phased reduction.

Secondly, to address the coal issue, they should invest in nuclear and clean coal technology like they’re developing in Alberta.

Lastly, the CPC and NDP should break off the mandatory auto emission standards from the Clean Air act and pass it ASAP.

In fact, the whole Clean Air Act should be broken down into different section and voted on seperately. Call it the Clean Air Plan, dare the Liberals to vote against all the different part of the Plan and go to voters with what we did and what the Liberals prevented us from doing (“We got all this done and we would have done more but the Dion Liberals were more interested in getting back in power than cleaning up the environment”)

You can’t replace coal with wind and maintain the share of the energy load that the coal make up. Wind is too variable to be more than 10% of any energy load and is somewhat economical in its efficiency. Its likely the most economical alternative but realistically you can’t have a highly variable source of energy consituting a significant percentage of your base load, especially when winds frequently miss peak hours.

Consequently your alternatives tend to be going with hydro and nuclear which both have their own environmental consequences to be dealt with.

As for the oil industry its not like the government isn’t turning a profit on the amount of money that goes in in subsidies versuses the amount that’s taken out in royalties. With the price of oil in decline at the moment it would likely be ill advised to to pull subsidies out as it would have a negative economic impact. Furthermore, subsidies are to my understanding primarily directed towards exploration of oil and gas, with the development resulting in royalties, job creation and positive economic spin offs as well as expanding Canada’s energy reserves.

the Candu reactor is the perfect solution for most of the C)2 issues regarding coal-fired plants…..but the enviro-nuts would have to eat a lot of crow if they suddenly became nuke-nuts….but they made their own bed….now sleep in it!

Nuclear energy is the only solution to the CO2 issue….get used to it!

Chris, my understanding (limited) of the tax breaks given in the oilsands area is that the royalties are either low (1%) or non-existent until the capital costs are repaid. Given that building an extraction plant + refinery is currently in the $15 billion range (and an upgrade in the 5-10 billion range), that doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I would gestimate that somewhere between 60-80% of the cost is labour. Which means JOBS*. And income tax revenues, etc. I could be dead wrong on this, but I don’t think so.

*which we can’t fill, but that would be another story altogether.

Well to a person, everyone in attendance - from the client CEO, to the Partner from our company, through to the few of us at the Consultant level - agreed that global warming was real, was a significant problem and should be dealt with.

The next time you’re at a hockey game and the subject of Global Warming comes up, go down to the timekeeper’s box, ask him for a bag of those frozen pucks they keep for the game, and get everyone in your box to hold one to their forehead until the fever subsides. Please.

It’s warm for January. So what? I’ll bet you a Bobby Hull rookie card that somewhere in the world, right now, they’re having record-setting cold temperatures. If you’re thinking, “oh yeah global warming will cause exceptionally cold conditions too”, then ask the beer girl to throw a few of the pucks in a microwave, and alternate hot and cold pucks until you can think straight again.

Even if there was a significant, rapid climate change taking place, do you really think that your government is capable of “dealing with it”? Go down to your local hospital after the game, count the people in the emergency ward waiting to be seen by a triage nurse let alone a doctor (don’t forget to count the people on gurneys in the hallway, and sitting in ambulances out in the driveway) to see how government “dealt with” the alleged non-accessibility of health care that was invented as a fake crisis back in the 60s. Wear a mask so you don’t catch a super-bug. Then check out how Dalton “dealt with” the fake crisis of Indians not having sufficient ancestral land in order to build ancestral casinos in Caledonia. He “dealt with” the problem in the usual fashion: (1) run roughshod over private rights and freedoms with the full force of the bureaucracy and police force; (2) throw as many millions of dollars at the problem as he can possibly suck out of the treasury/taxpayers/bond markets; (3) when all that fails, whine to the federal government and blame them for all of the problems resulting from his ridiculous and tyrannical socialist meddling. If you’re still not convinced, drive through a subisidized housing ghetto, or ask to see the books of the former Ontario Hydro and its present-day incarnations.

Here is the long-term forecast for Ontario: blizzards of taxes and regulation followed by severe waste and corruption, changing to inflationary meltdown and bankruptcy.

the Candu reactor is the perfect solution for most of the C)2 issues regarding coal-fired plants

Actually it’s kind of a crappy nuclear reactor whose design was conceived as a make-work project by socialist politicians and bureaucrats rather than any kind of real-world solution to anything. As for the construction and operation … (guess what!) … government agencies and crown corporations turn out to be hugely wasteful and generally produce nothing but a lot of padded contracts, featherbed union entitlements, broken-down equipment, and billions of dollars of debt.

Nothing against nuclear power, for all I know it could be a great technology … when it’s not being built by and for the benefit of government knobs.