[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Where?

Read my posts

Well if we are referring to transporation companies they can quite easily move their operations if their costs get too high. Many of those companies are starting to utilize dispatchers and other office staff that are out of province already since they can easily work remotely. I spoke with a dispatcher, from an Alberta based company, last week about a shipment from Calgary to Cranbrook and she was in Nova Scotia. Moving the physical warehouse equipment is a bit of a pain but not really a big deal if they are going to save on power, rent, labour, fuel, etc. The reason they are in Alberta to begin with is for a low cost environment, take that away and there is no reason to stay.

You are over simplifying the industry. Yes you can move a warehouse or cross loading facility, same as any other business. However when it comes to training staff for a new facility, the fines and penalties for late loads, in addition to loss of customers due to these issues can make it very difficult for a company to successfully make the transition. The savings on certain business expenses can be outweighed greatly by the loss of business and extra costs associated with a change in operation like that. It's not uncommon in that industry to have a company fold due to these factors. A very good example of this would be target's Canadian expansion. Moving the equipment would be a headache? That's likely one of the easiest parts of a move like that.

You're not adding 100's of kilometres in travel, you're just making that up. Transportation companies travel long distances through many jurisdictions and their trucks hold thousands of liters of fuel. If the price here gets higher than in surrounding provinces/states for instance they will have their drivers fill the tanks before entering Alberta, this is already common practice. Those companies work on very slim margins and fuel prices are a major expense.

As for greenhouses, yes they would see increased transportion costs if they moved but they have to look at overall costs. From my understanding their biggest costs are utilities and labour, they are going to be seeing big increases on both fronts thanks to this government. At some point, which we are already seeing, they will simply close shop in Alberta because they can't compete with produce coming out of the states. All of this of course means higher food costs which affects lower income people the most. It's not like people can just stop eating.

Am I making up that Saskatoon is over 6 hours away from Calgary? If you have a warehouse servicing Alberta from Calgary, you don't think there will be an added cost to the bulk of the shipments made to Alberta locations? Like Calgary for example? Saving 2 cents per litre is not going to offset the additional costs on fuel and labour costs for that load, and it's highly debatable whether or not it would offset the other costs of business.

To use your example of food costs going up, if a company spends $5000 on a load of food that will make them $50000, do you really feel that if the cost of the initial load is 5% higher because of the carbon tax, so $5250 total now, that the company will have to increase the costs to the consumer by 5% overall? What costs are they covering by increasing their revenue generated by that load to $52500? It's not as if grocery items are shipped individually by themselves, there will be an increase but if you do the math it's pretty easy to see that anything significant in this example would not be due to the carbon tax, it would be due to someone using the carbon tax as an excuse to price gouge.

You seem to have this mentality that as long as we don't make this bad enough for businesses to leave that's a good thing, you should be thinking how can we make things good enough to retain our current businesses and attract new ones.

The other side of the coin would be to suggest that you should be thinking of how we can try to make it not so bad for the people living in this province. The carbon tax affects everyone. The fact that the Feds are planning to implement one nationally should be enough to keep businesses here as it would be pointless to make a move for such a short term benefit. Should workers just accept any tax increase thrown at them so that businesses can have a break every time? As if those businesses are going to pay us back down the road? It doesn't matter when you choose to try and make a businesses piece of the pie smaller, the same threats always come up, "we'll never survive" "people will lose jobs", and people panic. At the end of the day businesses want to make money, and will make a little less than make nothing at all, same goes with workers. People work, make businesses money by being employees and consumers. Do we get paid to work? Sure, but they also make money from running their business. And guess who makes more? If the average joe can afford the extra expense, albeit not happily, then a business can too.

New businesses are attracted to making money, if a company that makes $1M in profits in one location can expand to another region, but will only make $500k in that region, do you really think they will choose to not go after that market just because it's not as profitable? Do you think they will simply let their competition take that market?