Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
The biggest problem with labelling everyone or everything as left or right politically is it convinces people that there is no nuance and promotes tribalism. I can assure you that union members, especially in this province, aren’t all ideologically driven to only support ideas on one side of an imaginary spectrum. There’s many union members/supporters that are any combination of pro guns, pro choice, religious and/or take a number of other positions that fall on the wrong side of what you label as left and right. The “spectrum” is such a flawed concept and only serves to promote division.
I don’t think the question should be whether or not they’re pro O&G, it should be about what they actually do when push comes to shove. Does it mean that they’re always going to make similar choices in the future? No, but comparing actually building a pipeline to slowly dismantling an existing healthcare system doesn’t seem like a rational comparison.
I don’t really buy the small special interests group arguments. The land rights issues in BC are far more complicated than simply passing a bill to deny people their rights. Keep in mind too that the O&G industry finances their own special interest groups to achieve goals unrelated to infrastructure development, IMO that is causing them to lose the broader public support that would help them more easily achieve their infrastructure goals.
The sale alone is expected to be worth between $15M-$25M(not sure if those figures are in CDN or USD) and the pipeline is expected to bring in revenues of $40B to the province alone over the next 20 years not including federal tax revenues it will generate. I personally think those revenue numbers will be exceeded due to the current geopolitical environment but that’s just my opinion. To be clear I’ll reiterate my point that the government stepping in to buy KM was not the ideal way to get this done, but unfortunately it was probably the only way it was going to get done under the circumstances.
Sources:
https://globalnews.ca/news/10019634/...-analysis/amp/
https://calgaryherald.com/business/v...danielle-smith
I respect yours as well…but admittedly my patience gets tested a little whenever people use the left/right labels in their arguments. None of the parties have the right balance at the moment, but unfortunately that isn’t going to change until people stop falling for the divisive rhetoric most parties and the news/social media continues to push. |
Haven't posted in a while, but this was too egregious to not reply to. At best, you're severely minimizing the timeline of events or at worst, you have zero understanding of what actually happened here.
Firstly, you're looking at the value of the pipeline completely incorrectly. You absolutely cannot include the revenues to the province as those would be revenues the province would be getting whether the pipeline was owned by the government or not. That should have been pure upside to taxpayers had a private corporation like Kinder Morgan built and operated the pipeline, like they would have if the government (federal and BC provincial) hadn't completely railroaded it. So congratulations, the federal government paid $30B+ for a pipeline that's worth $15-25B per your own sources.
Secondly, you are misremembering the timeline of events and how they played out (intentionally? perhaps, as it doesn't fit your narrative). The BC government intentionally threw up legal roadblocks hoping Kinder Morgan would back out of the project. They brought forth multiple frivolous lawsuits knowing they wouldn't win given pipelines that cross provincial boundaries are federal jurisdiction. The federal government did not in any way have to supersede laws in order to combat this - Trudeau had the power as Prime Minister to refer the case(s) directly to the Supreme Court to rule to expedite the legal decisions and put an end to the frivolous BS, but refused to do so because of political optics.
So that's why Kinder Morgan dropped out, and why Trudeau had to hold the bag because if he didn't, Canada would be seen as an investment hellhole where you can just be railroaded.
But please keep minimizing the actions and repercussions of the parties at play who absolutely could have done more to prevent the colossal waste of taxpayer money and prosperity for Canadians.