I wouldn't be surprised in the least if this loss of investment really catches up to Canada.
RBC had estimated that our economic growth this year would be adjusted to 2.0 percent. But I'm betting that its going to be lot less then that. But I think we get punched in the nuts next year, RBC estimated a slight slowing down to 1.8% growth next year. But I'm better that the best hope is flat with the investment leaving in Oil and Gas and manufacturing and the worst case scenario is a shrinking of the economy.
We very well could have manufactured our own recession.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Well it's good to see that productivity isn't really a thing at where you work at.
Not sure how you’re getting that impression.
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I'm sure you're very mentally or physically challenged. Better lie down when you get home.
I’m not sure which is more concerning, the fact that you need to resort to this level of pettiness in general or the fact that a person you believe to be mentally or physically challenged can frustrate you to the point where your only coping mechanism is to make such an embarrassing comment. Seek help Shazam.
I’m not sure which is more concerning, the fact that you need to resort to this level of pettiness in general or the fact that a person you believe to be mentally or physically challenged can frustrate you to the point where your only coping mechanism is to make such an embarrassing comment. Seek help Shazam.
No sonny, I'm saying your job is tiring you out. But of course you take it the wrong way.
You're tiresome. Stop defending bureaucracy like it's some sort of example of business efficiency.
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If you don't pass this sig to ten of your friends, you will become an Oilers fan.
So you just assume? And that’s what you’re basing your opinion on? Thanks for clarifying.
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No sonny, I'm saying your job is tiring you out. But of course you take it the wrong way.
Sorry pops, you’ll have to excuse my misinterpretation of your post. Perhaps if the first two sentences didn’t completely contradict eachother your message would have come across better.
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You're tiresome. Stop defending bureaucracy like it's some sort of example of business efficiency.
Maybe just ignore it if you find it tiresome, that way you can conserve your energy for all the work you do that is clearly much harder than the work of others.
There is also almost zero risk of losing your employment. Most sectors operate in a monopoly so there is very little incentive to find efficiencies or cut costs. Budgets, at least in Alberta, have consistently increased for decades.
I'm fairly certain most of the 100,000-200,000 people who have lost their jobs in the private sector over the past four years would have been quite happy with a set pay grade for eternity.
wrong and wrong.
think you're talking out of your behind when it comes to the realities of the public sector.
as for your last comment, I don't think any one of the oil and gas people making obscene sums of money for years who ended up losing their jobs would have at the time traded that for half the pay and that being capped.
they chose to get on that gravy train.
Budgets, at least in Alberta, have consistently increased for decades.
Well the province has doubled in population in the past few decades. A 20% increase in the past decade alone. That's going to see budgets rise. When you factor in that growth as well as inflation, a even a 5% budget increase could be an effective budget cut compared to previous years and service levels.
I'm not sure there's an effective way to adjust budget increases to correct for both inflation and population growth.
wrong and wrong.
think you're talking out of your behind when it comes to the realities of the public sector.
Maybe. Or maybe me and anybody who looks at the issues in detail? Most people consider it common knowledge, and I think the majority of people who have worked both sectors can easily confirm the fact it's almost impossible to get fired.
as for your last comment, I don't think any one of the oil and gas people making obscene sums of money for years who ended up losing their jobs would have at the time traded that for half the pay and that being capped.
they chose to get on that gravy train.
What do you mean by 'obscene' amounts of money? The data from statistics Canada shows that people in the public sector generally make more than those in the private sector for comparable jobs. If public sector salaries and benefits were commonplace in the private sector, most companies in Canada would be out of business in short order, as it's simply not competitive in a market economy. Only the government can continue to rack up obscene amounts of debt, mainly to pay employees, and stay afloat.
Well the province has doubled in population in the past few decades. A 20% increase in the past decade alone. That's going to see budgets rise. When you factor in that growth as well as inflation, a even a 5% budget increase could be an effective budget cut compared to previous years and service levels.
I'm not sure there's an effective way to adjust budget increases to correct for both inflation and population growth.
Really a moot point....Government spending in Alberta has far outpaced inflation and population growth. This trend has only been exacerbated since the NDP came into power.
Really a moot point....Government spending in Alberta has far outpaced inflation and population growth. This trend has only been exacerbated since the NDP came into power.
The "source" for that chart is... less than reliable/credible.
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"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
This kind of thing was needed 3 years ago, but I guess better late than never. Hopefully they keep it up. I think a big part of the lack of concern from the rest of the country is that they have no knowledge of what is going on, not that they don't care. That was the impression I got on my last visit to Ontario, anyway.
This was posted in r/canada. Read the comments if you want to get an idea of what the rest of Canada thinks.
Alberta's job losses don't matter as much because oil and gas = bad, but we'll keep taking the equalization payments and importing Saudi oil all the same.
We are in serious trouble.
"You dug your hole, kept digging, upgraded the digging methods to dig faster, and put a lid on the hole. You got what you bargained for, deal with it."
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I like to believe the Reddit is not a good representation of the population as a whole. Or a part, even. Maybe the scrapings of goop you get when you clean out a grease hood.
I'm neutral as a budgeting policy, but in so far as no policy can bind future legislatures it's pointless in the same way a deficit referendum law is/was.
If a future government decides they want to cut transit spending, or wants to cut back on infrastructure, or increase either, or change the revenue sharing model, they will do that instantly in their budget implementation bill.
The only purpose of this "deal" is to get natural allies on city councils to howl if a party runs on amending/repealing carbon tax spending, and they will.
It’s electioneering as they tied the funds to the Carbon tax. So when Kenny says they will cut the Carbon tax Notley will tie it to transit.
I don’t like that it increases it good times and decreases in bad times. Government spending should be counter-cyclic. It good times we should be paying down debt from spending in bad times or investing in long term savings.
Crazy how that point corresponds with with 2 straight months of dropping oil prices and warnings earlier in the year (2014).
As far as the recovery goes I think the trend lines used in better times are pretty silly to use for comparison today. Why not use the trend lines from the mid 80s?
Oil prices and access to market seem to be the problem. It's not carbon tax, and it's not the political party leading the province. If prices stayed high no one would care.
I'm not dedicated to any particular party because that's a moronic concept. All the parties in this province have screwed up consistently. We're in a bad position because the PC party made a mess for decades and high oil prices kept everything hidden. The NDP can't fix all that in 3 or 4 years, not that they would be able to even if they wanted. I'm not a big fan of any political party but this my team vs your team mindset is just silly.
Crazy how that point corresponds with with 2 straight months of dropping oil prices and warnings earlier in the year (2014).
As far as the recovery goes I think the trend lines used in better times are pretty silly to use for comparison today. Why not use the trend lines from the mid 80s?
Oil prices and access to market seem to be the problem. It's not carbon tax, and it's not the political party leading the province. If prices stayed high no one would care.
I'm not dedicated to any particular party because that's a moronic concept. All the parties in this province have screwed up consistently. We're in a bad position because the PC party made a mess for decades and high oil prices kept everything hidden. The NDP can't fix all that in 3 or 4 years, not that they would be able to even if they wanted. I'm not a big fan of any political party but this my team vs your team mindset is just silly.
It's not the drop off that's important, is that the recovery is incredibly muted and has stalled. The trend line from the 80's would be a much higher growth rate as Alberta's economy was REALLY booming then.
Market access is a problem that the NDP should have been working much harder on solving a long time ago. Without a doubt they've destroyed private sector job growth in Alberta, the numbers just don't lie. They can't be booted out of office fast enough.
Here's another great chart showing the comparable recoveries after the even larger oil price driop in 2008.
^
I like to believe the Reddit is not a good representation of the population as a whole. Or a part, even. Maybe the scrapings of goop you get when you clean out a grease hood.
More articles like this need to be written. Imho, regionalism is a huge destructive force in Canada right now. We have a huge country, and it is difficult sometimes to feel empathy for people who live 1000 in away, in a place you have never visited and don't really understand. Treating something as "out of sight out of mind" is much harder when it is in your own backyard.
I am a lifelong Torontonian who moved to Calgary about a year ago. My wife is from northern Alberta, but I don't even know anyone who works in the oil patch, except for my Environmental Scientist brother in law, whose firm is having tough times.
I came to Alberta with some preconceived notions, but they turned out to be wrong. I planned to be out of work for a long time when I got here, but found a great job in a month (turns out the job market here is actually pretty great if your skills don't lie in engineering, geology, environmental science, or other oil and gas related specialties). I figured oil drove everything here, but was wrong. Calgarians understand the importance of the oil industry that built the city, and still drives a huge portion of it, but there is not a single Calgarian I have met who isn't gung ho about diversification (between 1987 and 2014 oil and gas' portion of Calgary's GDP dropped from 54.9% to 31.5%. For perspective, that 23.4% drop in the percentage of GDP is approximately the percentage of Toronto's economy represented by all manufactured production.) And, of course, I assumed that Albertans didn't care much about the environment, but was very wrong. They do care a lot about the environment, in fact, they are much more outdoorsy than people in Toronto. Whereas nature is a distant thing for many Torontonians, a lot of people I know here spend pretty much every weekend they can in the mountains and are very protective of the province's vast beautiful landscape.
Ultimately, Albertans are very similar to Ontarians in pretty much every way. Blue collar workers here work on the rigs, instead of in manufacturing plants. People here who don't work on the rigs still understand how important oil is to the economy, just like Ontarians understand how important manufacturing is there. People in both places want to help the environment, but also understand economic realities and the need to diversify away from environmentally harmful industries like oil and car manufacturing, in a sustainable way.
Oil companies here have vastly improved their emissions and environmental record over the years, not because of people 1000km away who want the oil sands shut down, but because Albertans demanded accountability. Albertans elected an NDP government who ran on a platform of social licence. Notley was a cheerleader for Trudeau's carbon taxation (ie. The anti-Ford). She agreed to shackle her province's most important industry, to force further accountability, in exchange for pipelines for the oil that was already on its way from projects approved years ago that were just about to come online. She will probably lose her job because she trusted Trudeau, in that regard.
The idea that Trudeau killed the Harper-approved Northern Gateway pipeline to appeal to voters who have never been within a day's drive of the area affected, is utterly bonkers to me. But it stems from this "holier than thou" regionalism that has people on the eastern side of the country judging Alberta's industry without actually understanding Alberta, as a whole. Ontarians rightfully feel bad for the people of Oshawa, who's economy is going to be crushed by this plant closure. They supported financial assistance for the production of fossil fuel guzzling automobiles during the financial crisis, but somehow feel that the industry producing the fuel that drives those cars should be shut down. Quebec supported financial assistance for Bombardier, to help them build fossil fuel guzzling jets, but, again, seem to feel that different rules should apply to the industry that actually fuels them. BC actually supports Trans Mountain, but its government used "every tool on the toolbox" to fight against it, despite its predecessor already approving it, then happily approved the largest fossil fuel project in Canada's history in it's own province.
I would have hoped that Trump would have taught us a lesson these past couple of years: we can't always count on the states. United we can stand our ground, but divided, we will fall. NAFTA negotiations should have been a good example of this. We don't realize how interconnected we are, but those talks should have showed us. Do you know how we got such a good NAFTA deal last time around? It was the guarantee of our energy from the west that won us a trade deal that helped the rest of the country. This time around, we had hamstrung ourselves such that we didn't have the capacity to send our energy anywhere else, and that leverage disappeared (and before anyone says it, yes the US produces their own oil now, but they make a fortune off of buying ours, refining it and shipping it elsewhere. They also benefit from lower energy prices all over the country because Alberta's supply drives down west Texas prices, which are around $10/barrel below the world Brent price). Dairy farmers in Quebec may not realize that they suffered because of the death of Energy East, but they did. In fact, every province will end up taking a hit on healthcare costs because of patent protection rights we gave the Americans in that deal. If we had a couple pipelines to the coast, maybe that doesn't happen.
We need to stop, as a country, hating on our brothers and sisters. The idea that someone in downtown Toronto can condemn racists and homophobes for judging people they don't understand, and then, in the next breath judging Canadians from a province they have never visited, is the sort of hypocrisy that is driving us apart. We need to stop with this attitude that we are Ontarians or Albertans, BC'ers or Quebecois, instead of all just being Canadians. When Alberta succeeds, Canada succeeds. When Ontario succeeds, Canada succeeds. We need to stop pushing each other down and start supporting our brothers and sisters. We may live 1000's of km apart, but we are one country. We need to start acting like it.
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