Austerity is in the air and there is much grieving and gnashing of teeth across the land.
I understand the anger of the municipal workers. But I also understand the anger of the average taxpayer. Most of us don’t have a gold-plated pension plan like they do. And if things stay as they are, there will be two classes of citizens: those with great pensions and those with poverty-level government pensions. And it will be the unfortunate citizens who will be paying higher and higher taxes to pay for the pensions of the fortunate.
Hospitals are having to work on smaller and smaller budgets. University subsidies have been cut. Nationally, there were cuts to the arts and sciences. Everywhere you look, government is crying poor and reducing their support.
Am I crazy? Couldn’t the proper exploitation of oil pay for all these things.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
The world needs oil. As an oil-producing nation we could use the income to fund all our social programs.
Norway is famous for it.
Canada is the sixth-largest oil-producing nation in the world. The Alberta oil sands have reserves second only to Saudi Arabia.
Yet, while Canada is cutting funding everywhere in an effort to balance our budget, the oilogarchy of Norway is debt-free.
Norway’s government funds all the things our government is cutting. There is free university tuition, universal daycare and 25 days of paid holiday each year. Per capita spending on health care is 30-per-cent higher; while funding for arts and culture is more than three times higher than Canada. Consequently, no one in Norway is advocating scaling back or shutting down existing oil facilities. There are no ongoing protests, nor the heated political rhetoric that has become so commonplace in Canada.
Yet, day after day the chattering classes in Canada act as if our oil sands and pipelines are some kind of evil.
Looks like we’ve been Suzukied.
(Source: click here for full Rick Blue editorial for the Montreal Gazette)
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