Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[GordonBlue]

FIRST READING: The Laith Marouf scandal (somehow) keeps getting worse
The feds are blaming the non-profit that hired Marouf, apparently unaware that Marouf runs the non-profit.

https://canoe.com/news/canada/first-...-getting-worse



Hussen issued a statement demanding that the Community Media Advocacy Centre (the official recipient of the $130,000) explain how they hired Marouf, without apparently realizing that the centre consists exclusively of Marouf and his wife. The pair are the only two consultants listed on the CMAC website.

[CaptainCrunch]

Clearly there is little vetting going on.

The other part is another Liberal MP, Anthony Housefeather (sp?) was sounding the alarm long before this broke to the press based on a simple look at Marouf's social media precense, and Hussen ignored it.

[calculoso]

Re: Healthcare increased funding requests

As far as I’m concerned, the approach and concerned raised in the second half of this video are being dealt with in the right way. No money without strings attached or games will be played.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1546902980242309122

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Azure

Scholz is also telling people that their nuclear plants won't be permanently run because it doesn't actually solve the gas issue, and yet electricity prices in Germany are skyrocketing. Wouldn't running nuclear plants bring down those prices or at least keep them from going up?

Not necessarily. France uses nuclear for 70% of its electricity generation and its wholesale electricity prices (both baseload and spot prices) are higher than Germany's right now. And future baseload prices into 2024 and 2025 are basically identical between the two countries. Germany has higher retail prices, but that's because of taxes and levies.

The nuclear plants are owned and run by private companies who can sell their power through contracts at whatever the market rate is, so if other power generation prices rise, so too will nuclear. France is seeking to fully nationalize nuclear producer EDF in an attempt to keep prices lower, but the company is deeply in debt. So unless France basically subsidizes electricity prices, the power produced by EDF will likely remain expensive.

[blender]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

FIRST READING: The Laith Marouf scandal (somehow) keeps getting worse
The feds are blaming the non-profit that hired Marouf, apparently unaware that Marouf runs the non-profit.

https://canoe.com/news/canada/first-...-getting-worse



Hussen issued a statement demanding that the Community Media Advocacy Centre (the official recipient of the $130,000) explain how they hired Marouf, without apparently realizing that the centre consists exclusively of Marouf and his wife. The pair are the only two consultants listed on the CMAC website.

Ok, that is absurd.

[Northendzone]

I find it hilarious that the German chancellor flew all the way over to Canada (in a climate emergency) to ask for a product that he had to know that the PM was not in a position to or have any interest in selling to him.

Do these donkeys not listen to each other when they meet in the same room?

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

I find it hilarious that the German chancellor flew all the way over to Canada (in a climate emergency) to ask for a product that he had to know that the PM was not in a position to or have any interest in selling to him.

Do these donkeys not listen to each other when they meet in the same room?

If Germany wants LNG it can invest in one of the 5 fully permitted LNG Export projects on the East Coast.

Edit: Also at current prices in Europe synthetic methane production from green hydrogen and direct air capture carbon is probably economically viable. Remember the cure for high prices are high prices.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Not necessarily. France uses nuclear for 70% of its electricity generation and its wholesale electricity prices (both baseload and spot prices) are higher than Germany's right now. And future baseload prices into 2024 and 2025 are basically identical between the two countries. Germany has higher retail prices, but that's because of taxes and levies.

I assume these are taxes and levies for general goods and not specifically to subsidize the green energy, because otherwise it is indeed more expensive.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Not necessarily. France uses nuclear for 70% of its electricity generation and its wholesale electricity prices (both baseload and spot prices) are higher than Germany's right now. And future baseload prices into 2024 and 2025 are basically identical between the two countries. Germany has higher retail prices, but that's because of taxes and levies.

This is because there are numerous nuclear plants in France under repair right now.

Yet, at the worst possible time, France’s fleet of nuclear stations are under pressure. Over half of the country’s 56 reactors are shut for maintenance, due to routine inspections as well as corrosion issues. Output this winter is expected to be 25% below that in a normal year. To compensate, France has had to buy electricity on wholesale markets. It plans to reopen a coal-fired power station in Saint-Avold, mothballed only in March. On July 6th the government announced that it would fully nationalise edf, the country’s energy giant, in which it already holds an 84% stake. “At a crucial moment for Europe’s energy supply, French nuclear is just not able to step up,” says Cécile Maisonneuve, energy adviser at the French Institute of International Relations, a think-tank.

https://www.economist.com/europe/202...wn-for-repairs

The nuclear plants are owned and run by private companies who can sell their power through contracts at whatever the market rate is, so if other power generation prices rise, so too will nuclear. France is seeking to fully nationalize nuclear producer EDF in an attempt to keep prices lower, but the company is deeply in debt. So unless France basically subsidizes electricity prices, the power produced by EDF will likely remain expensive.

France has had numerous issues with their reactors. The fact that 50% of them are being worked on at the same time which is creating an electricity deficit reeks of incompetence.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

I find it hilarious that the German chancellor flew all the way over to Canada (in a climate emergency) to ask for a product that he had to know that the PM was not in a position to or have any interest in selling to him.

Do these donkeys not listen to each other when they meet in the same room?

It is hilarious.

lol.

STEPHENVILLE, Newfoundland, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Germany hopes Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG) will help ease its shift away from Russian gas imports, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday, a day after Canada played down the economic viability and speed of setting up new export terminals.

Also on the final day of an official visit that started on Sunday, Scholz and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Newfoundland announced a "hydrogen alliance" aimed at accelerating efforts to export the clean fuel to Germany by 2025.

"As Germany is moving away from Russian energy at warp speed, Canada is our partner of choice," said Scholz at a German-Canadian economic conference in Toronto. "For now, this means increasing our LNG imports. We hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this."

Canada currently has no LNG terminals, though two are being built on the West Coast.

https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...lz-2022-08-23/

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Azure

This is because there are numerous nuclear plants in France under repair right now.

https://www.economist.com/europe/202...wn-for-repairs

But baseload prices into 2024 and 2025 are similar between France and Germany, so obviously it's not just a temporary shutdown driving prices. The market is anticipating that electricity generation costs in France will remain comparable to Germany in the coming years.

France has had numerous issues with their reactors. The fact that 50% of them are being worked on at the same time which is creating an electricity deficit reeks of incompetence.

That's what happens with old reactors when they're extremely cost prohibitive to maintain and when it takes 10-20 years to build new ones. If France's reactors are failing due to lack of maintenance, that's because companies haven't been able to remain economically viable at the (already high) prices they charge. EDF is tens of billions of Euros in debt and is losing money this year.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by SebC

I assume these are taxes and levies for general goods and not specifically to subsidize the green energy, because otherwise it is indeed more expensive.

I'm talking wholesale prices. If France's electricity generation was expected to be cheaper in the coming years, then baseload prices from their producers would be lower than those in other countries, but they're not.

As for retail prices, about €0.14/kWh of Germany's electricity prices are taxes, levies, and transmission charges, and €0.037 of that is the renewable surcharge. In France, the average rate includes approximately €0.067 taxes and levies. So even without the renewable surcharge, taxes and levies are significantly higher in Germany and that's what drives the majority of the difference in retail prices.

[CliffFletcher]

Re: Marouf

It's not as though this guy was just some obscure nobody who kept a low profile. Marouf was known to be a complete ####-bag for 20 years.

The bigot in question is Laith Marouf, a fanatical Palestinian-rights activist and one-time campus firebrand whose activities I’ve been following, on and off, for two decades—beginning with his 2001 expulsion from Concordia University in Montreal. Marouf had attacked a campus security guard who’d been trying to help apprehend him for spray-painting anti-Israeli graffiti on a local building...

One might imagine that these developments would have career-limiting implications for Marouf, a Syrian citizen whose father had been sent to Montreal on diplomatic assignment by Hafez al-Assad’s regime. Yet Marouf somehow managed to scratch out a Canadian career as a community activist, equity officer, radio host, and, most recently, government-bankrolled anti-racism consultant—all without making any effort to hide his antisemitic views. As well as posting hateful comments on social media, he’s also become a regular on Russian and Iranian propaganda outlets, spouting conspiracy theories about Israel, the war in Ukraine, and the Zionist machinations of the international media...

...He also called Colin Powell “the Jamaican house-slave of the Empire,” dismissed Canada’s Francophone population as “frogs,” and celebrated the outcome of a Beirut bombing that, he crowed, turned French soldiers into “bags of minced meat.” During a recent trip to Washington, DC, Marouf took a selfie at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which he tweeted along with the wish that the memorial were “much bigger, with the names of a few million dead corpses of [American] dirtbags.”

...Marouf’s first gig after leaving Concordia was at Under the Olive Tree, a weekly (allegedly antisemitic) Palestinian-themed news show that he’d set up through McGill University’s CKUT radio station. He then wound up back at Concordia, as director of a community-focused television operation, before (not unpredictably) alienating his colleagues and getting thrown out. By this point, Marouf was styling himself as an expert in grass-roots media. And in the late 2010s, he began lobbying Canadian regulators to impose diversity quotas on broadcasters, whom he accused of creating “Apartheid on the airwaves.” He continued doing so even after moving his family to Beirut in 2019, where, by his own account, he has lived ever since.

All in all, Marouf’s outfit earned at least half a million dollars from the CRTC between 2016 and 2022...

https://quillette.com/2022/08/25/the...sm-and-racism/

It's hard to believe nobody in the government knew this guy's history. Is it too much to ask that the federal government hires diversity consultants who A) live in Canada, and B) aren't consumed with poisonous hatred?

[Azure]

Do you expect anything different from the Trudeau government other than sheer incompetence?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Azure

This is because there are numerous nuclear plants in France under repair right now.

https://www.economist.com/europe/202...wn-for-repairs

France has had numerous issues with their reactors. The fact that 50% of them are being worked on at the same time which is creating an electricity deficit reeks of incompetence.

No! Not the French! Not the notoriously fastidious and on-the-ball French!!

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by Azure

Do you expect anything different from the Trudeau government other than sheer incompetence?

The more troubling part is the left wing go-to move of calling anyone who dares question them a racist.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1562841992195088385

[Azure]

If we get Quebec onboard the LNG train, Trudeau will go for it.

The CEO of a Quebec-based oil and gas company is calling out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's claim that there has "never been a strong business case" for liquefied natural gas exports from Canada's East Coast to Europe.

Mario Lévesque, chief executive of Utica Resources, says the rationale for exporting natural gas from Quebec is "crystal clear," and would generate "tens of billions in royalties and taxes" for Ottawa.

Lévesque's comments follow an energy-focused tour of Canada by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was accompanied by a delegation of business leaders from Europe's largest economy. The three-day trip saw the two nations reach agreements on hydrogen and electric vehicle battery minerals.

Lévesque is not alone in criticizing Trudeau's business case assessment. Kevin Krausert is CEO and co-founder of Avatar Innovations, a Calgary-based venture capital firm and startup accelerator that pairs entrepreneurs with the biggest companies in Canada's energy patch. He says the business case is "a lot stronger and a lot faster than our Prime Minister suggests."

"Today, you have an existing, operating LNG import terminal in New Brunswick operated by Repsol, the Spanish super major, that could be turned around quickly," he told Yahoo Finance Canada's Editor's Edition. "There's a lot of gas on the East Coast that (we) wouldn't have to transport that far."

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/tr...170144276.html

It could well represent one of the biggest missed opportunities in Canadian history: An embattled Europe is clamouring for natural gas, and one of the world’s biggest producers of the stuff can’t sell it to them.

The economic hit is overwhelming: At current prices, even just one Canadian port exporting liquid natural gas could be adding nine figures to the Canadian GDP each day. Politically, Canada could be helping to deal a body blow to Russian hegemony over Western European energy. Instead, on both fronts, Ottawa appears content to watch from the sidelines.

Canada ranks 15th in the world for proven natural gas reserves, and is the planet’s fifth largest producer of natural gas. The problem is infrastructure.

There isn’t a single LNG export terminal in Canada. Every single liter of natural gas that Canada manages to export all goes to the United States via pipeline.

This hasn’t been for lack of trying. Natural Resources Canada notes that in recent years it has received proposals for 18 LNG export projects, including five on the East Coast. Just one of them is under construction, while another is not quite poised to break ground.

While it’s unlikely that all 18 were economically viable, Canada’s regulatory framework is notorious at scaring away energy projects. Just in February, a $10-billion LNG export facility planned for Saguenay, Que. was rejected by the Quebec and federal governments largely on the grounds that it would increase greenhouse-gas emissions.

Notably, every single one of the now-languishing East Coast projects were in the planning stages as early as 2015, meaning it’s not infeasible that in a less Byzantine regulatory climate at least one of them could have already been coming online.

In an interview this week, Enbridge CEO Al Monaco hinted at Canada’s infamous latticework of energy industry red tape when he said the country needs to “get out of our own way when it comes to energy and building infrastructure.”

And the odyssey doesn’t end even for projects that manage to jump through Canada’s regulatory hoops. One need only to look at the political nightmare that has accompanied the construction of the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat, B.C. Upon its scheduled completion in 2025, it will become Canada’s only port serving LNG carrier ships.

This has all shaped up to be a uniquely Canadian story. In other LNG hubs such as the Australia and the United States, the last few years have been defined by a multi-billion-dollar energy boom.

Australia spent the 2010s constructing nearly a dozen LNG export terminals to capitalize on an Asian push to adopt the fuel as a substitute for coal. In the first six months of 2022, LNG exports earned Australia the equivalent of $150 million per day.

The continental U.S. only began exporting LNG in 2016. Now — with a handful of new export facilities coming online in 2022 alone — they’re on track to become the world’s largest single exporter of the fuel.

It’s why, within weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States was able to respond by boosting its LNG exports to unprecedented levels.

https://vancouversun.com/news/canada...box=1661353899

Don't we love our government?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Azure

If we get Quebec onboard the LNG train, Trudeau will go for it.



https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/tr...170144276.html

Wait I’m confused, wouldn’t this be good for Alberta? I thought Quebec was supposed to be out to get us and hold us back from any and all prosperity.

Sarcasm aside there have been many groups in Quebec lobbying on behalf of O&G projects for a long time, maybe focusing on bringing attention to that would be more helpful to this province than blaming them for almost everything we perceive to be wrong at every opportunity.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Wait I’m confused, wouldn’t this be good for Alberta? I thought Quebec was supposed to be out to get us and hold us back from any and all prosperity.

Sarcasm aside there have been many groups in Quebec lobbying on behalf of O&G projects for a long time, maybe focusing on bringing attention to that would be more helpful to this province than blaming them for almost everything we perceive to be wrong at every opportunity.

Every province should be able to export their natural gas.

If Quebec can get their gas to port, good for them. Hopefully that means hooking up some pipelines so Alberta, Sask & Manitoba can get their gas to port as well.

[Mr.Coffee]

The reality is that to make LNG go you need buyers to accept the full cost of the gas plus fixed tolls for transport, processing, shipping, etc. The costs are high to do this and our regulatory burden WAY too high in this country. It's just not worth the headache when you can, you know, just go to the States and do it. When capital costs are into the multiple billions you need super majors of private companies to build these and those types of companies are massive multinationals and they all know watch LNG Canada all the rest of the projects that have failed that, you know, Canada just can't do it.

Even today, there are still so many obstacles and not enough government fortitude to get stuff done. And there are protests and on and on and on.

One of the funniest stories I heard (from the source) was a major international investor in one of these projects that came into Canada a long time ago to build an LNG terminal. One of the requests from the feds at the time was that they had to clean up the site they wanted to build the terminal at, because the site had been polluted heavily by an old creosote plant that had leeched into the coastal areas and destroyed local habitat. So this company spent millions of dollars cleaning up the site over the last few years for their project. Fast forward today and what's happened? Now they have cleaned the site, local fish and wildlife are returning to it and the waters are cleaned, but now they are having mass protests to build the site because the LNG terminal will cause risk to the local habitat. It's laughable if you can get past how depressing this story is. You ask /invite foreign companies to invest their capital in your country for economic stimulus on the condition they have to do some clean up work, that's fine. But then when they do it, after insane delays and other regulatory burdens which are the highest in the world, you have mass protests and a general apathy / lack of government support for fthe project and now it's languishing. We are talking about a multi-billion dollar capital infusion into our country for development and export of a key strategic resource, that will generate billions in economic potential for Canada and local towns / provinces, etc. Hundreds if not thousands of jobs, and we cannot get out of our own damn way.

What has happened to Canada is obvious. Canadians have had such an insanely high standard of living, that they have not had to really work that hard to compete, and they have not had to care about improving (or even maintaining) standard of living much less strive for economic potential for lower levels on the pyramid of the hierarchy of needs (food, shelter, etc.). Quality of life has been so good, for so long, that everybody just expects things happen. Everybody expects and is entitled to a high standard of living, to fair and high wages, to economic independence in exchange for honestly not much sacrifice relative to the world, to energy and resources with the flick of a switch or the turning on of a tap. Utilities, roads, schools, hospitals, education, power, natural gas, everything is ####ing awesome here. And so what has happened is we have a MASSIVE cultural problem, wherein Canadians are so entitled and lazy. We have a huge problem. We have the guts to go invite multi-billion dollar foreign capital, force them to clean up our lands and then delay and red tape them into oblivion preventing anything from being done. We have the ability to turn up our nose to billions of capital infusions into our economy and to turn away the multi billion dollar GDP influx of having LNG and exporting our resources and pretending that climate change is the number one concern of Canadians, when it isn't. We have the ability to be ignorant of our politics, to not care about our democracy too much, to embrace or not care about our own ignorance.

This is a cultural problem. And this absolutely is going to cost all of us a lot in the long-run. I guess at that point when our standard of living drops substantially (and it will, and it already has started to happen), hopefully future Canadians can wake the F up and try to compete in this global economic competition to maintain our standard of living or seek to improve it. Middle age Canadians today are lazy, entitled, NIMBY / ignorant and now an arrogant people. Pretty much the precise opposite of our parents and their parents generations. It's going to kick us in the balls.