Quote:
Originally Posted by Bownesian
You're moving the goal posts from the post I replied to.
The Liberal plan was to significantly increase Oil Sands operating and development costs through increased taxes and to implement an undefined and potentially punitive GHG reduction scheme. They further campaigned to end one of the two major methods to get expanded oil-sands production to market.
Both of those platform planks are indeed very much anti-oil sands, which you contended were not part of the Liberal plan.
The results would have been to curtail new drilling and development at least until it was determined whether the GHG plan would make production uneconomical, and would keep us locked into selling our Oil at a 10% discount compared to world prices because we have to sell it to the US.
Drilling is where the large majority of the jobs are in the Oil Sands and the Liberal plan spoke about deliberately slowing down development through these measures. A small change in the royalty regime in Alberta was enough to shut down (Half?) of the rigs drilling here for a couple of years and made a bad situation (poor gas prices) worse, spurring big layoffs. What the Liberals proposed would have been a bigger change than what Stelmach did to us and would have led to a big drop in drilling and thus all of the jobs that goes with it.
It's a defensible argument to say that the Oil Sands development should be slowed significantly (layoffs) or shut down (more layoffs) for environmental reasons or that taxes should be higher but saying that the Liberal platform was something that it was is not defensible. The honourable thing would be to admit that you either didn't know this aspect of the Liberal platform or didn't understand the consequences of it.
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The campaign against Northern Gateway (which is what I assume you're alluding to here?) was an issue for me personally. Liberal MLA Kent Hehr wrote an op-ed for the Calgary Herald expressing support for the pipeline and suggested that if we allow tankers through the eastern shores then the West should expect that same treatment. That's still a far cry from "shutdown the oil sands".
I also don't agree that the Liberal position regarding the sands is all that different from the CPC position. You point to policy documents and that's fine but the fact is the CPC policy is also for cap and trade. They haven't acted on that, but I remain unconvinced that a Liberal government would either. We had this argument numerous times in the election thread last year and resolved nothing. I am still of the belief that the whole argument is a pure red herring by the CPC.
I also didn't move any goal posts. It was suggested that the supporters continued to vote for Anders because the other parties want to shutdown the oil sands and that's just patently false. You can point to policies and infer what you want, but it's simply a non-starter.