The real emergency: Turning Canada into a global economic power without dependence on the U.S.

By Gerry Barker

April 15, 2019

Opinion

Two city councilors, Phil Allt and James Gordon, both former defeated NDP candidates for the Ontario Legislature, and former defeated mayor, Karen Farbridge, are raising the alarm for the city to declare a “Climate Change Emergency.”

It made the bells ring about all the efforts, and tons of misspent public money, of which the three of them planned and were aided by some fellow travelers. They took action to develop what they perceived was power self-sufficiency. Add in the millions spent on squeezing vehicle lanes to provide bike lanes for a tiny but noisy user group operating two-wheeled self-propelled bicycles on major roads, facing 3,000-pound motor vehicles.

I have experienced a few close encounters with those active transportation riders, particularly when the sun goes down. It has scared the living daylights out of me.

These riders are unlicenced and uninsured operating on busy streets without rules or regulations governing their movement on public streets.

I know, I know you’ve heard all this before, but fasten your seat belts because we are going national,

Are the Trudeau Liberals about to do a Wynne swoon?

Let us count the ways.

The SNC Lavelin affair is sticking to the Liberals like stepping on a wad of bubble gum. Complicit is the tag team of the former Attorney General, Jody Wilson Raybould, and Health Minister Philpot, who ended up booted out of the Liberal caucus.

It was the price of defying the boss who caused the problem in the first place. How many times has that happened to you?

The Tories are pounding the table daily, demanding the Prime Minister resign for interfering with a decision by the A-G to pursue SNC Lavelin. As Guelph is Liberal/NDP/Green country, for – fill in your own reasons. Mine is the Guelph Tories have not elected a member to the Legislature or House of Commons in 16 years.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Liberal’s re-election blues. It helps explains why Canadians are angry and feel cheated by the Liberals and the Prime Minister.

Let’s start with the immigration file

Refugees entering from the U.S. are not being controlled. The casual walk-in asylum seekers at border points are allowed into the country. Even those arriving by plane from other parts of the world land without any authority to enter the country but a demanding asylum for fear of their lives.

The Trudeau government has allowed thousands to walk in, an estimated 60,000 in two years to enter our country without prior vetting by Canadian Immigration staff. This practice is the policy of the Liberals who say they are obligated by International Law to admit them. The result is that those folks wanting to come to Canada and who are checked out by immigration before they arrive are sidetracked by the walk-ins.

Some 250,000 immigrants arrive annually and are approved by Canada Immigration. This is designed to replace those Canadians who no longer live in the country. That includes those who apply to Canada before coming to the country. Also, a number of Caribbean citizens arrive to help the agriculture community to grow their harvest. They wisely leave before the snow flies.

Solution? Any refugee who claims asylum arriving from the U.S. is immediately denied entry. If U.S. Immigration let them into their country, they can look after them.

There is evidence that some of these refugees have identification from several countries that would make them ineligible to enter Canada.

Also there is an active industry of immigration groups being paid to get refugees into Canada. A Haitian group based in Florida encourages Haitian refugees to take the bus to the border point just south of Montreal and walk-in claiming asylum. The fact the Haitians speak French is a plus. Many have been temporarily housed in the former baseball stadium known as the Big O.

Southern nights at the border

You don’t have to look too far to see what’s happening along the Rio Grande as the U.S. government has separated families and has custody of 2,700 children and has no record of the parents or their location. Now they are planning to set up tented facilities to hold what they call illegal’s. The Trump government has turned this debacle into a deliberate political issue without compassion or any legal basis.

It is important to remember that following the election victory of the Democrats winning the House of Representatives last November, the president shut down the government for 35 days. His decision caused thousands of federal workers to go without being paid. He finally attempted to obtain $5.7 billion to build a 3,200-mile concrete wall to stop the people attempting to seek a better life in the U.S. It never passed Congress.

Solution? Stop watching the cable news channels. Sorry, I can’t help myself.

The General Motors shut down of the Oshawa Assembly plant

Several months ago, General Motors announced it was closing its Oshawa assembly plant by the end of 2019 resulting in a loss of more than 3,000 jobs. The company chose not to close as yet; its engine plant in St. Catharines or the SUV jointly operated assembly plant in Ingersoll.

Lest we forget, when the Federal and Provincial governments spent billions to finance GM in 2008 that has already declared bankruptcy. The province, to protect workers, turned over $10 billion while the Feds matched it or more to Chrysler and GM.

The Province was eventually recovered some $7 billion that shored up the two auto corporations. Ford remained solvent. It now turns out that some $3.5 billion was not returned to the Federal government. That was ten years ago.

While Unifor, the Oshawa workers union struggles to save the jobs, GM did not changing its mind. This all occurred while the US and Mexico and Canada were renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. Parliament or Congress or Mexico has never approved the new deal. The three leaders portrayed a settlement in a photo-op ceremony in Argentina that was part of the G20 meeting.

Solution 1? The Trudeau government should serve notice on GM to either pay up or transfer the title to the federal government. This would include the plant property, inventory, production equipment and all non-proprietary documents; pertain to the production of vehicles.

This could take time, as a court challenge will emerge. The statement of the Government’s claim should include the entire additional government funding request ted and received by GM since it has operated the plant. That goes back to the time when GM bought the plant from the McLaughlin family who built the McLaughlin Buick in Oshawa.

We’re in deep in this one, folks.

Solution 2? Actively research and attract foreign auto producers to take over the plant for $1 plus other tax incentives and agree to build vehicles to service North America and the world markets.

What Canadians needs now

It’s the right to look back at what we have achieved in 74 years. By declaring an emergency to mobilize our governments, to work together toward exporting our resources, skills and lifestyles across two oceans, selling free trade that works both ways without tariffs, threats and trade impediments.

We can become a world trading power to creating financial stability, justice and health for all in our new partner states, employing ingenuity and instilling pride.

We have the stuff and political democratic systems but are unable to move it and share with other nations who are seeking a better life, jobs, education and freedom.

The beginning would be a series of workshops led by the Federal government to develop an action plan to clear the obstacles facing the oil and natural gas pipeline expansion. In concert, open access for shipping our commodities and products from both the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean ports.

A series of programs will be developed to export our agriculture products and expertise, our forestry and home building products to new customers at fair prices and delivery; exporting our communications expertise including 5G high speed Internet development; building systems to produce ships, aircraft, vehicles, agriculture equipment. The world-class Canadian financial institution’s expertise will play a major role in developing opportunities and systems for our trading partners.

Most of all create more good jobs and opportunities for all Canadians.

Our most important export is our knowledge base professionals that have already made Canada a world leader in all aspects of the human existence.

In short, we can do all of that and bring endless prosperity to our country as well as that of our trading partners.

Is this the end of our trading relationship with the United States? Absolutely not. Canada will be open for business to any society that shares our established Free Trade and democratic principles. This is a long-term project that will survive the changing political leadership facing our trading partners.

Looking back, this is not the first time we’ve mobilized to win

In September 1939, Canada joined Britain declaring was on Nazi Germany. The country with a population of about 11 million became a major power in the European Theater, North Atlantic, Asia and North Africa.

By the end of war in Europe, Canada had the largest Allied land army in Normandy, France, Belgium and Holland. In addition, we had the fourth largest navy in the world and Canadian aircrew made up 1/3 of the RAF. The RCAF operated squadrons in Bomber Command attacking Germany; South East Asia Canadian and Commonwealth pilots supplied Allied troops by parachuting supplies against the Japanese; by air patrolling the east coast and escorting convoys heading access the Atlantic searching and sinking enemy submarines.

On the home front our country manufactured tanks, combat aircraft, trucks, weapons including field pieces, ammunition, food and fuel to be shipped to Britain and Italy where our army units were battling their way through the country fighting the Germans.

We became the breadbasket and quartermaster of the collection of Commonwealth Allies fighting on three fronts.

Canada was turned into a mighty war machine that trained through the Commonwealth Air Training Plan more than 500,000 aircrew on many bases across the country. Almost every citizen who was able rolled up their sleeves and changed Canada in almost six years.

But we paid a huge price. In World War 1 more than 52,000 Canadians were killed and thousands more maimed for life. In World War 2, 44,000 Canadian lives were lost and many others severely wounded.

In August1945, the war ended when the Japanese surrendered. Our returning service men and women were given opportunities to go to university, own property and get jobs. Most important, it created the biggest baby boom in our nation’s history.

The end of the war was the beginning of Canada’s Golden Age of growing up. Our country was led by the wartime Liberal government of Prime Minister MacKenzie King. He was critized through his long tenure as PM. Both Churchill and Roosevelt tolerated him regardless he got job got done.

Our country opened it doors to refugees from all parts of the world that made great and noble contributions to our country. Even in the Seventies, following the defeat of the U.S forces in Viet Nam, Canada accepted 65,000 Viet Nam refugees escaping Communism and called the “Boat People.”

As Canadians, that is what we do.

Today we are at a crossroad in which our largest trading partner, the United States is trying to force us to knuckle under to destroy a Free Trade Agreement that has benefited both our countries.

In my opinion, this is ultimately not going to work out well for Canada at all. We are facing a despotic president who doesn’t care, has no compassion for his two major trading partners, Canada and Mexico.

He is in the process of destroying the greatest free trade agreement the world has ever seen.

This is not the time to make hollow declarations of emergencies of climate change. It is time to collect ourselves and protect and enhance what we have.

It’s time for us to mobilize as a nation and take care of number one.

Our imperative should be to open our resources and establish free trade with China, India and all members of the Trans Pacific free trade organization of which the U.S. refuses to belong. We should also reopen the free trade agreement with the European Union without Great Britain that is bifurcated by Brexit.

Until we take action we will remain at the whims of a megalomaniac president with power to destroy what we have achieved in good faith

By any stretch, that’s a dangerous position in which to be.

How bad can it get?

Think what will empower Trump if he is re-elected in 2020 for another four years.

Prime Minister Trudeau, your time is now to unite our country and take it forward without the baggage of division, denial and negativity that is flooding the airways, Internet and social media.

October will come soon enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisement

Why America wants Canadian oil – Part Two

Posted January 24, 2015

A spokesman for Valero Energy Corp., the giant oil refinery operation located on the U.S. Gulf Coast, said there is a specific demand for heavy sour crude because for those able to refine it, “it is significantly cheaper than the benchmark grades of crude oil.”

Most of the heavy sour crude currently being processed at Valero is coming from Mexico, South America (Venezuela) and Russia, with increasing amounts coming from Canada.

“We would rather it came from Canada because it’s closer,” Said Bill Day, director of communications for Valero. “It’s less expensive to transport it, it’s more reliable, a better trading partner, and so forth.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration data shows the importation of Canadian oil will rise from 3.2 million barrels per day in 2014 to 3.4 million in 2015. The Energy department report projects the demand for Canadian crude will flatten out to as low as 3.28 million barrels per day by 2020 then rise gradually to 4 million barrels per day by 2040.

This projection of increasing Canadian crude shipments is estimated without the benefit of the Keystone XL pipeline that has awaited U.S. government approval for more than three years. In fact, construction of new pipelines in the U.S. is already receiving increasing amounts of crude from Canada.

Does the President of the United States not read these reports supplied by his own officials?

The U.S. “Annual Energy Report 2014” states, “the future increasing demand for diesel fuel increases the value of heavier crude in U.S. Refineries.”

Heavy oil accounts for some 43 per cent of Canadian production and 65 per cent of exports, according to the Association of the Canadian Petroleum Producers. This group says the big growth in energy demand will come from the Southeast Asian nations.

“Our industry needs to have access to where our customers are,” says Tim McMillan, president of the Petroleum producer’s organization.

So where does this leave the government of Canada?

The Finance Minister, and former Energy Minister, Joe Oliver, recently told a Calgary audience that Canadian oil exports to the U.S. will decline over the next few years. He went on to say that it was another reason for Canada to develop the infrastructure – read that pipelines – to move its oil to new foreign markets. Even Prime Minister Harper opined that Canada selling its oil to other markets besides the U.S. would be “the last thing Americans would want to see.”

At the same time, the government endorses the Keystone XL pipeline into the U.S. and supports the Northern Gateway and East Energy pipelines taking oil to each side of the country for export.

It’s called sucking and blowing at the same time.

The Canadian government handling of the whole Keystone issue has been a public relations disaster, with a toxic mix of threats, lying by omission and ignorance of the facts.

How can the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, Greg Rickford, gush to an American audience in Texas: “Our government welcomes today’s latest milestone, contributing to already historic volumes of Canadian energy being supplied to the United States.”

An accompanying news release stated the new U.S. pipelines will help boost Canadian Oil reaching the Gulf Coast to 600,000 barrels a day from the current 200,000 barrels a day.

It’s hard to understand why the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources fails to read the official data supplied by the U.S Energy Information Administration, projecting Canadian oil imports at 3.4 million barrels this year.

Does Rickford not talk to Oliver or Harper?

Let’s get these choirboys singing from the same page.

Those loyal Tories in Calgary must be cringing with this wind-blown rhetoric that the late Lil Abner would say: “ It’s confusin’ but amusin’, “

 

 

 

AMERICAS VIEW -How the greenies corrupt the message

Posted April 9, 2013

The talented and provocative MSNBC host Alex Wagner, of the noon hour talk event, made the fatal mistake of giving her platform to the environmental lobby who denigrate the Canadian Oil Sands development and proposed XL pipe line.

Alex, let’s make a deal. Canadians will stop yapping about American gun controls and the illegal smuggling of guns into our country, if the U.S talking heads will stop yapping about how awful the Oil Sands’ development is ruining the atmosphere.

It’s a crock.

As a journalist, you have a responsibility to report and comment in a balanced fashion. When you bring in the head of the Sierra Club to address his group’s protest, you should also have invited the premiers of Alberta and or Saskatchewan. Both these provinces are the second largest suppliers of crude to America … after Saudi Arabia.

Yeah, I know, time constraints and availability of guests is a bind in live television. It is also easier to lard up the guest list with people sharing the same point of view. Also those folks receive an appearance fee. This epitomizes MSNBC’s slogan of “Leaning Forward”?

Here are some facts for your producer to consider:

There is already several pipelines transporting Alberta crude to the Gulf refineries.

More than 500,000 barrels of crude a day, some from the Oil Sands, are exported to the U.S.

A like amount of natural gas is also shipped south.

U.S. oil giant Conoco Phillips uses imported Oil Sands crude in its Texas refinery.

The U.S. is still reliant on Middle East and South American crude to supply 40 per cent of its needs.

The OPEC crude comes at a much higher price that Canadian crude.

Most of that imported oil comes from countries that are not friendly to the U.S.

The sustainability of Gulf of Mexico oilrigs to supply feedstock to Texas area refineries is rapidly declining.

Due to the sheer size of our countries, Canada and the U.S. are dependent on vehicles with internal combustion engines, well into the foreseeable future, to drive our economies. Pardon the pun.

There is a gradual increase in vehicle and power plant fuel efficiency.

No amount of renewable sources of power will supplant petroleum-based fuels.

Why does the environmental movement keep referring to “Climate Change” instead of “Global Warming”? Because science has determined the plant has cooled by .7 degrees in the past decade.

The real protest in the state of Nebraska is not about the TransCanada XL pipeline but its attempt to shut down the Oil Sands and its crude production.

The charge that the Oil Sands is the major North American producer of carbon dioxide, is an environmental myth. Besides, basic science states that Co2 is necessary for plant and animal life to create oxygen.

One volcanic eruption, such as the recent Icelandic explosion blanketing Europe for five days, wiped out any human attempt to curtail Co2 emissions by five years.

There are 200 active volcanoes in the world. At any given moment they can increase the amount of Co2 in such massive quantities that it destroys man’s attempts to protect the ozone layer by forcing people to adopt lifestyle measures that will protect the planet.

Unfortunately, we cannot control nature. To those who label the Oil Sands product as the dirtiest in the world, should look out the window in Iceland or the Philippines to witness the world drenched with real toxic materials. The volcano Pinatubo, in the Philippines, spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in one year than the entire human race emitted in all its years on earth.

This argument has nothing to do with the XL Pipeline, it’s all about a coalition of environmentalists trying to shut down the Canadian Oil Sands using misrepresentation of the facts as well as scare tactics.

Principal’s opening message to students

This is a contribution forwarded to Guelphspeaks by Barbara McHattie that reflects the feelings of most Canadians. If only every school principal would adopt these rules. Then perhaps the education system in the country would bring all students to understand what it means to be a Canadian and an educated one at that.

This speech was written by Dennis Prager, a California radio talk show host who is not a high school principal, but posed as one. However its sentiments are shared by parents across North America. With that caveat, enjoy!

To: The students and faculty of our high school.

I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school.

I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in Canada have worked against you, against your teachers, against your parents, and against our country. Therefore: First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow, or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian, or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships. The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is Canadian. This is a Canadian public school, and Canadian public schools were created to make better Canadians.

If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial, or religious identity through your school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-Canadian-nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of Canada.

And this school will be guided by Canada ‘s values. That includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness. Your clubs will be based on interests and passions — not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism — an unhealthy preoccupation with the self — while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So, we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, math, carpentry, and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in are those based on ethnic or racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.

Second, I am not interested in whether or not English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united Canada’s citizens for more than 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English-language skills, I will have been remiss in my duty to ensure that you are prepared to compete successfully in the Canadian job market. We will learn other languages here — it is deplorable that most Canadians only speak English. But if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning’s elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for a meal at a nice restaurant than they do for church or school. Those people have their priorities backwards. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school’s property — whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can’t speak without using the “F-word,” you can’t speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission plus epithets such as the “N-word,” even when used by one black student to address another, or “bitch,” even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few of your age to distinguish instinctively between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way — the way people attained it by earning it. One immediate consequence of this is that there will be only one class valedictorian, not eight.

Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom-wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual, or not Christian. We will have failed, if any one of you graduates from this school and does not consider himself or herself inordinately lucky — to be alive and to be a Canadian.

Now, please stand and join me in singing, OH CANADA to the only flag in Canada. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.