Those tar sands ducks/geese will have the last laugh yet.
Alberta will end up with a pst.

This will affect Quebec more than Alberta. Who do you think gets the bulk of transfer payments in Canada?

Lildigger but it’s okay for birds to be killed by wind generators?

I’m actually kind of shocked how happy everyone is – especially back East – at Alberta’s downfall. I think when the price of oil went back up, if I was Alberta, I’d be remembering who my friends “weren’t” and I’d be thinking about maybe a referendum of my own. Ontario thinks manufacturing jobs are going to spring out of the ground, forgetting, that pretty much anyone in the world can manufacture, and you need plant and equipment – which won’t happen overnight. Also, the price is little deceiving. When oil was $100.00 a barrel, that was U.S., and we had pretty much at par exchange rate. Now it’s 48.00 a barrel, but it’s 1.2 C$ to every US, so it’s more like $58.00 C a barrel – a big drop for sure, but not a full half, more like 40%

What about all the fishes killed and eggs destroyed when they open up the spillways from the dams?

If anyone is interested in how Canada’s GDP from 2013 was comprised, based on industry classification, here are the stats (in millions of dollars):

Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting 28,185
Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction 130,218
Utilities 39,341
Construction 116,685
Manufacturing 168,437
Wholesale trade 87,852
Retail trade 85,805
Transportation and warehousing 65,667
Information and cultural industries 52,524
Finance and insurance 107,823
Real estate and rental and leasing 200,288
Professional, scientific and technical services 85,316
Management of companies and enterprises 11,622
Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services 40,387
Educational services 84,442
Health care and social assistance 108,867
Arts, entertainment and recreation 11,269
Accommodation and food services 33,161
Other services (except public administration) 31,817
Public administration 109,163

Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction contribute about 8% of Canada’s GDP. Not sure how much of that would be related to Alberta specifically, but it would be a fair amount less when you consider that this industry classification includes all such activity across the country.

All of this to say that while the drop in oil price will indeed have impacts for the country, I think it’s going to felt in Alberta far more than in the rest of the country where economies are no where near as dependant on oil as in Alberta. I’d say it’s similar to when manufacturing and tech took a big hit and many people out west just looked at it and said “that’s Ontario’s problem”.

I think we spend too much time looking at provinces and regions and not enough time looking at how we can make the economy of the entire country stronger. This is where the provinces and the federal government should be working together. We don’t seem to have seen much of that in recent memory.

Pval got data? What about natural waterways flooding?

I think we spend too much time looking at provinces and regions and not enough time looking at how we can make the economy of the entire country stronger. This is where the provinces and the federal government should be working together. We don’t seem to have seen much of that in recent memory.
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Truer words were never spoken.
Cheers

You sure can tell who the patch workers/lickers are around here.
Gonna be some hurtin albertans crying the blues.

Seamut. Have witnessed it numerous times.. As for natural waterways flooding it’s slightly different don’t ya think.. One is like opening a tap from off to full..the other is opening the tap 5% till the basin fills up.. I will let you guess which is which ;)

Got news for you, it ain’t just an Alberta problem. All of Canada will feel the pinch.
metalman.

The province of Alberta will hurt, but remember that many if not most of the patch workers are not from Alberta. They are from BC, and the East coast, plus all over.

When they get laid off, they will be going home. That will affect the regions they call home, like BC. Our employment metrics will be affected without the benefit of the share of resource dollars.

Kelowna is the holiday home capital of Alberta, so one can assume real estate in the Okanogan will be in for a down year. Probably real estate in general will be in for a tough year.

Of the list above how many industries have the price elasticity of their own to keep pace with real estate? Utilities and finance can keep pace maybe? None of the others have the ability to set their own market pricing with little constraints. I always thought it would be interest rates or China trade that would pop the housing bubble, but who would have thought oil would play that role.

If our total exports are about 10% of our GDP and a third of that is a wash because of our oil imports in the East… then this should say that Energy East should be the primary concern for Canadian economic security from a balance of trade perspective. Energy East would make Canada far more sovereign in its internal economic sustainability to insulate the country from external market conditions and add to the gdp of the country in the process.