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Old 11-22-2012, 06:11 PM   #309
SebC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89 View Post
Fully agree. McGuinty's comments were anti-oil sands, but if you were considering Turner or Locke than you probably don't care enough about that for it to effect your vote. If you're #1 issue is continued oil sands expansion then you wouldn't dabble in voting Green, NDP, or Liberal. It's pretty clear where each of those parties stands vis-a-vis the oil industry. It's really just different shades of how hard to hit the industry relative to the current operating environment.

NDP -Will not allow Northern Gateway, Trans-mountain expansion, and has made openly hostile remarks with regards to Keystone XL claiming it better to 'keep refining and upgrading jobs in Canada'

Greens - It's the green party, regardless of how smooth Chris Turner talks about the issue, it's not like anything he advocates is going to improve things from an oil and gas industry perspective. At best in his world the oil sands are tolerated to the extent that their economic benefits are collected and diverted into subsidizing green jobs.

Liberals - Their 2011 election platform specifically mentioned 'banning tanker traffic off the west coast.' Taken literally that means that Northern Gateway and the Trans-Mountain expansion are up in flames, and it also puts the continuing existance of Trans-Mountain and the tanker traffic it creates out of Burnaby at risk. That said I would hardly imagine that the Liberals would shut down Kinder-Morgan's existing Trans-Mountain pipeline (They would get sued for billions). Thinking about that, it makes me wonder if the Liberals even knew there already was tanker traffic off the west-coast. If not it speaks volumes about their regard for one of Canada's most important industries.
I actually agree with most of this... but I figure that if Alberta starts electing MPs from these parties, we might be able to change their positions on our industry. It's much easier to scapegoat a region that doesn't support you than one that does (or at least could).

Last edited by SebC; 11-22-2012 at 06:13 PM.
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