37 Replies to “Red Rose Country”

  1. Don’t know about the rest of you, but, the left has bastardized the language.
    Government expenditures are just that. They are NOT investments.
    Alberia is so ufcked under this regime, the lies started during the campaign, and will continue right thru.
    “This is a different NDP”. Yeah, as different as the baloney in Thrifty’s and Save-On.

  3. Lenin’s Agitprop teams perfected political propaganda in the 1920s and the left everywhere has adopted and used this form of the verbal misinformation which is designed to lull the population as to what the real agenda is.

  4. Alberta is among the most expensive places in the world to produce oil. It’s big plus is stability or should I say WAS stability. I think building refinery capacity in Alberta with no markets would be a stupid waste of a billion, mind you it would shake up the retail gas market. In reality, another refinery would probably just close meaning we will have spent a billion or more for no net benefit.

  5. Yes; we all say that refinery capacity is a good thing; but easily may not be economical. Transportation in bulk by ship is very cheap. The Come By Chance refinery on the South Coast of Newfoundland actually had to be mothballed for several years. It is now operating, but little of its output goes to Newfoundland.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_By_Chance_Refinery

  6. I really hate the term corporate welfare. Businesses generate revenue, and pay taxes on that revenue. Reducing the taxes paid is NOT welfare. People on welfare DO NOT generate revenue. Or if they do, they DON’T REPORT IT. Therefore they pay NO taxes, and receive all of their official income from welfare. The day the government starts paying businesses money to not do anything at all is the day the term corporate welfare makes sense.

  7. And when Bob Rae became Ontario’s premier he said that only having gotten 38% of the vote meant that he’d be governing through consensus-building with the Opposition.

  8. Government corporations run by bureaucrats are socialism.
    Private corporations favored and dictated to, benefiting from unknowing tax paying working stiff and sucking up to socialist regimes are fascism.
    Free enterprise is run by those that produce widgets that people want to buy.
    They should be supported only in so far as, go, do yer business, make yer money and pay yer taxes.

  9. The NDP in Alberta is in for an important tax lesson. In Alberta, for every $1 raised in corporate tax almost $3 is raised in personal income tax. As corporate revenue drops so does personal income tax remitted to the government. Corporate tax is paid on profit earned. As profits fall, so does corporate tax paid. Should be an interesting school year. It’s feeling like Bob Rae all over again.
    I remember the old Bob Rae tax forms in Ontario. A very simple two part form.
    Part One: How much money did you earn last year?
    Part Two: Send it in.

  10. looks like the country is getting a little smaller, the trip east ends at Hawksbury and the one west ends at the Sask/alberta border. too bad

  11. We need government run refineries because the old government run liquor stores were such a pleasure to shop at.

  12. Leaving academia to ferment in socialist sludge for generations has consequences and economic malinvestment, stasis, and disinvestment are just some of the benefits. Alberta is just the next in a long succession of regimes ruled and ruined by freshly minted sophomoric twits. The reality is that their predecessors, while masquerading as conservatives were quite the socialists themselves and so everything wrong with the Conservatives will be exacerbated by their successors. Socialists have such an easy time politically because they simply blame everything wrong with their opposition on what they don’t do such as the mythical allegation of “unfettered capitalism”.
    WRP needs to absorb the PC vote entirely to change this next time.

  13. I was at an event the other night that was attended by a lot of public sector employees.
    One guy was going on and on about how it would be good if the oil sector in AB collapsed because then we would develop other industries. When I asked him why anyone would start a new business in a province that destroyed its main industry he said he didn’t understand the question and moved on.
    A woman was insisting that Alberta should be like Norway and everyone in Norway was a millionaire (??!!) and they all paid 65% taxes and that would be great for Alberta. When I mentioned that I had worked in Norway and that I could confirm that everyone there was in fact not a millionaire and that it had many problems, starting with its welfare system, she called me a liar and walked away.
    We are in big trouble.

  14. Brian Topp. What do you expect? His views are boilerplate Marxist, rife with obfuscation – “what don’t you want any government?”- “government investment isn’t all bad.” Actually it is, any possible exception doesn’t change that reality. Apparently government footing the bill for refineries is better than sending “raw” product to Texas or China. Does that mean the AB NDP is now in favour pipelines as long as refined product goes through them? You’ll get back to us on that. Right, government “investment” drawn up on a dinner napkin, that always works well. Milke is right; subsidizing industries that are not profitable is not investment, but it’s usually politics.
    Topp’s appointment is a bad signal. Anyone who thinks this NDP will break the mould and not be full on “progressive” is kidding themselves.

  15. A world class refinery produces 500,000 bpd of mixed product. Cost is far in excess of
    $10 Billion. We have a group in BC, which Stockwell Day is part of, who are promoting a refinery in Prince Rupert as a way to mitigate shipments of crude which is ecologically riskier. They are having trouble raising investment.
    Oil producers have reduced refining in western Canada for decades. In my time the issue was always the lopsided demand for more diesel and less gas. Gas margins were always under pressure and eventually excesses were shipped/trucked into Montana. Capacity was reduced to improve refining margins.
    When politicos talk about refining in AB or BC I wonder if they are making puff pieces or whether they have a solution to the problem the major oil companies could not solve. The scale of modern refineries is needed to reduce unit cost, pipelines have to be able to ship the refined product which required massive storage at either end of the pipe. Storage for multiple product lines. What down time in the pipe to convert from one product to another and what of frequency? Obviously the destination for AB refined product would most likely be the USA. What yields the highest returns thru the pipe? Are American refineries geared to process AB heavy oil willing to stand down? I doubt it.
    What about Prince Rupert? My thought there was that Canadian refined product would be competing in a international commodity market. How cost effective would that production be versus Indonesia or even China? Another aspect is the national security issue for many countries if they abandon their own refinery capacity to support Canadian production. Not only does it threaten domestic capability but it enhances the threat of interception on the seas during conflict.
    As you can conclude the idea is not high on probability. It is political posturing that is not limited to the Dippers. It is probably made out of ignorance but has populace appeal of the 5 minute sound bite. Citizens should not be surprised because that is how serious Canadian issues are always addressed. I hold the CPC responsible for a very poor effort to educate Canadians of the serious issues facing the country. Instead of campaigning in the Fall over such issues it will center more on why Justin Turdeau took the curls from his hair style. The reality is cold economic facts and debates would leave people like the Dipper leader and Turdeau slinking from the debate. But it won’t happen so why should I get excited.

  16. Just wait until they introduce a corporate capital tax like they did in BC years ago. That was a real killer. Corporations had to pay tax on EXISTING EQUIPMENT.

  17. NDP bring on the destruction!
    I want to buy a new RV this year, I’m betting I’ll find a pretty good deal.

  18. We in Saskatchewan welcome all the derricks, rigs and personnel from the oil patch to our province. Come-on east!

  19. No, I voted Wildrose, but as I am a semi-high earner, I expect to take a financial hit. My strategy to survive the next four or five years, is to work fewer hours, and to do whatever I can to reduce my income, in a manner that will benefit my rapidly approaching retirement.

  20. The out come of the election in Alberta shouldn’t be referred to as an “Orange Crush” but rather as a soaking of “Agent Orange” specifically designed to kill everything positive about this Province.

  21. denis >
    “Come-on east!”
    A wise man once said “If you build it, they will come”.
    I’m just itching to watch Alberta clean out! Bumper to bumper traffic on hwy#2 over the last several years is too much to take anymore. I like my cruise control way too much to have put up with it much longer.
    And the Third World!!!! Oh my, I left working and travelling to some of the shittist Third World crap-holes for good a couple of years ago only to find it in my own back yard thanks to Alberta “Hot Economy”. Let it burn baby, it’s time to turn back the clock and clean house for four years until the WRP takes the reigns.

  22. “The day the government starts paying businesses money to not do anything at all is the day the term corporate welfare makes sense.”
    You mean, like pretending to generate electricity with windmills?

  26. pete…. that is already happening. have you not seen all the wind farms and solar panels around the country. that my friend is corporate welfare to the extreme.

  28. People deserve to get what they vote for and Albertans are gonna get it good and hard.

  29. Lemme tell you about the Alberta elections.
    While it is obvious that there are a good number of morons that voted for the Agent Orange©Kevin
    , on the whole more people voted for the Progressives and the Wild Rose in combination.
    Many of the conservative mind stayed home due to the lack of good candidates. Sometimes the stench is so bad that even if you hold your nose, it’s difficult to avoid the smell.
    Had to vote independent to avoid the crap. Wild Rose won here anyway.
    One thing though should be noted, the Wild Rose and the Progressives are so diversified, you would think you live in diversified country.
    The Agent Orange not so much.

  30. Occam >
    Well in truth 60% of Alberta voters didn’t vote for destruction, but whatever Alberta needed it. I’ve been ranting about bringing down the Alberta economy for years, this is a good thing like a market correction on an overinflated bubble.
    Get ready though, we have a hell of allot of waste to send back your way, and it’ll be coming hopefully soon.

  32. There is a reason refinery capacity is what it is in Alberta. Market. There is no market for refined product in the West. The market wants bitumen – that is what we sell. Bitumen. Nobody wants refined product from Alberta.
    The ‘build it and they will come’ model is fiction.

  33. abtrapper >
    Do you want to get rid of the deadbeats or what?
    Don’t discourage everyone else from getting some of Alberta’s overabundant cultural enrichment, we can share.

  34. And they’re off and running!
    So this is a different NDP, Nuttly was going to be a pragmatic leader, someone once said here? Then she hires this communist Topp from Ontario as her chief of staff, and now this.
    Way to go, Alberta! You drank the Orange-flavored Kool-Aid, now sit back, and… Wait! What? Our transfer payments are being cut? Why those dirty so-and-so NDPers… what right do they have to kill their goose that lays the golden egg, and ruin it for the rest of us?
    This is going to be fun watching our entire country go up in a puff of smoke, while the left eats their own…
    Pass the popcorn.

  35. If Kotter can come home again, then maybe the Turbo Refinery that used to be at Balzac within sight of the Calgary Tower can also be brought back home again and given a second chance.
    New life for old oil refinery

    It is not every day that an entire oil refinery is dismantled, moved half way around the world, and re-erected for a second life. But that is what happened late last year when the former Canadian Turbo oil refinery at Balzac, just north of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, was moved to its new home in Russia. Once producing 30,000 barrels of refined products per day, the refinery was originally built in 1981. Shell Canada purchased the refinery in 1992, but it outlived its usefulness at Balzac and was sold to Congress M. Congress, a stock venture company which is managing the purchase for the Russians.

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