I hope this is correct and leads to some real development and community growth for some cities in the north.

Think of all the kick-backs to our current provincial government. Just ask Nathan ‘Tin Foil Hat’ Cullen.

The definition of a kick-back is:

A clandestine payment in return for a favor; especially an illegal one.

Is that what is being hinted at with the remark?

I hope not.

Additional provincial tax revenue is neither clandestine nor illegal.

Prince George – that comment was in regard to a long O-250 thread yesterday where some of this town’s brightest lights implied that Kinder Morgan (and other energy sector players) were making ‘kick-backs’ to our current provincial government. Those comments (by others) were presented without a molecule of evidence or convincing argument, of course.

Those comments play into the loopy left narrative that fat-cat, corrupt, business-friendly politicians are sitting around in Victoria collecting brown envelopes full of cash from industrial project proponents. That narrative is dead wrong, obviously, and needs to be challenged at every turn.

About the only article the Tyee has published that made any sense was the one about IPP’s and who is involved. You should look it up. That is just one example.

You can stop hoping pgjohn . It’s already happening in Rupert , Terrace and kitimat . The nail guns start every morning and bang away all day . Housing , hotels and businesses are popping up like mushrooms . The helicopter traffic is unreal . We need a Costco . All the stores are too packed . It’s been about four years of growth and it’s not letting up even in midwinter .

Ataloss,
My concern is the amount of camps being built in the north. Concerns me to see high wages being paid out to people who are there for a few weeks, don’t spend in the community and fly back to Vancouver.

For once, I would like to see northern wealth stay in the north. We can’t keep seeing a decrease in population in the region.

Pgjohn you’d like to see northern wealth stay in the north ? The pop of Rupert , kitimat and terrace Are growing . We’ll find out by how much next long form census .

We can’t keep seeing a decrease in population in the region.

Why not? with less than 1.6 percent of tourism dollars, declining resource extraction due to decreasing commodities pricing and all the other indicators, why do we need to maintain or increase population levels in the north?

That is like the statement that we need to encourage more business for business sake.

Business only exists to generate profits. Remember that most of the colonial expansion, development and resource extraction was originally through some form of slavery. This has not changed accept that the slaves do not realize that they are still slaves. It all begins with your birth certificate that creates a straw-man that you are legally obligated to represent.

Eagleone could shed more eloquent light on this concept or you could look on your tube.

The projection by the Province of BC for PG growth in the mid 1970s, 40 years ago, was a city of over 200,000 within 40 to 50 years. The projections were never based on jobs. I cannot remember hearing the word “jobs” in those days. I am tired of hearing “jobs” quite frankly.

What creates jobs is population growth. High birth rates, longevity, immigrants, etc …. those characteristics create jobs to create the products and services for those people.

If we do not have those population increasing elements, then we have to increase access to the population of other countries that are wealthier than we are and can afford to buy products from us …. You know, like the Chinese have been doing for decades now and Japan before them and Taiwan before them, and Germany ….. and what they continue to do. BUT, Canada does not seem to be a match for them, so, we rely on our raw materials which we ship off to other countries so that they can continue to make the “stuff” they can sell to us because we are not able to compete in that sector of the economy.

Projections are just that, projections. Eventually both cities may grow to the projections, or simply stay small cities in out of the way places in a province where things happen close to the US border, like elsewhere in Canada.

5,000 jobs ion Rupert for 10 years…. Then what? …. The $350,000 houses will be listed for $175,000.

Luckily it is my kids kids who will be watching that repeated scenario.

Sounds like another provincial election is on the way. The nail guns that you hear are also building homeless shelters.

Absolutely correct on the debt slavery system Loki . Just like overt slavery of old ,there is only one way out . If you want your freedom , you have to buy it and it ain’t cheap . But oh so worth every penny .

gopg2015:-“BUT, Canada does not seem to be a match for them, so, we rely on our raw materials which we ship off to other countries so that they can continue to make the “stuff” they can sell to us because we are not able to compete in that sector of the economy.”
————————————————————————

If they did not sell the “stuff” they make from our raw materials back to us, just how, then, would they PAY us for those resources? Or for what WE might make out of them here, for sale to THEM?

“That narrative is dead wrong, obviously, and needs to be challenged at every turn.”
**********
Oh is that right?

The population in Prince Rupert is declining.
2006 had a population of 12,508
2011 had a population of 12,158

They also have over 13% unemployment rate. This needs to alos include the 30% Aboriginal population.

The population growth you are seeing is imported workers for the industrial projects.

So again, big business goes in, brings their own employees, does there thing for profits, then leaves with little actual residual effects in the community.

You know, like building a 10,000 man camp instead of adding to the local community in any substantive or lasting way such as was done in and for Tumbler Ridge.

Take the blinders off sheeple.

Yes Loki . That was five years ago . The numbers were from the last long form manditory census . You would not believe the changes . As for the camps affect on local housing . It would have been insane logistically and financially for kitimat to have housed thousands of workers in town . I don’t think there would have been room for starters . PG would be hard pressed to do that kind of short term housing of thousands . Also, what would you have people of tumbler ridge do when they stop mining the coal there . Please don’t say tourism . I believe it will eventually be a ghost town like the thousands of other spent forces that dot the globe .

The only accurate data comes from statistics Canada and the Labour Force Survey.
Yes, the census data is old enough that census Canada is now advertizing for survey workers.

I do agree with your sentiment about tourism, except that after the resources are gone, the farm land flooded, and the trees pillaged, all we are going to have is a some forms of tourism.

The problem for me is that of the 13.6 billion dollars brought by tourism into BC, only 1.6% landed in the caribou region.

See how important tourism is for northern BC?

As of a few days ago not a single container ship was at sea in the North Atlantic. All were in holding patterns off the respective coasts. This is a first in modern history and is a stark picture for the global economy, which has come to a standstill.

I agree Prince Rupert has a bright sustainable future with their ports, but it may be years before capital expenditures can be justified by trade volumes again. Look at China it’s falling apart economically, and Europe is on the Ukraine hang over and economically dead.

In globalism we are as Loki says slaves. Slaves to a corpocracy that unlike the slaves of old when a slave owner had responsibility for the well being of their slaves… The new corporate slave traders have no social responsibility. They download that part to government and the short term contract employee mantra. Globalism is about labor arbitrage so corporations can lower the bar and collect the difference. It’s good for the ports but it guts the economic sovereignty of nations.

It would be great to hear politicians talking about building a more sovereign economy rather than hitching our future to pipe dreams of the global elite.

Eagleone:-“Globalism is about labor arbitrage so corporations can lower the bar and collect the difference.”
————————————————————————
Individually, amongst corporations it seems to be so. But collectively? Won’t work. Not long term. It’s the ‘real’ failure of globalisation ~ which actually has many other advantages, if it weren’t for a fatal drawback. Most people still derive their incomes from employment. Displace workers somewhere, and collective incomes fall. Even though individual workers still employed might get raises. And it’s the spending from these incomes that’s needed to generate ANY corporate profit.

So if that’s so, (and it is), how then do ‘corporations’ overall make LARGER profits?

They don’t. Even the ones that manage to book larger profits in a ‘dollar’ amount from year to year, are actually generally making a smaller profit as a percentage of their sales over the same period. Look at the accounts of any company that produces any of the real things we actually need to live over an extended period. Food, clothing, shelter, etc. You can easily verify this. Further proof is in the number of former corporate ‘giants’ that are now no longer with us.

People point their fingers at corporate profits. But they really should dig a little deeper. Into the way businesses are financed, and the rules and conventions of business accounting. And how that financial two dimensional world of debits and credits relates to the third dimension that’s present in every transaction ~ the ‘money’ itself.

Socredible wrote:

“If they did not sell the “stuff” they make from our raw materials back to us, just how, then, would they PAY us for those resources? Or for what WE might make out of them here, for sale to THEM?”

It almost sounds as if you never heard of multilateral trade. They sell the “stuff” to others and pay us back with the money they make from them.

What I am saying is that we have to start to get into the game of making “stuff” that is competitive on the world market. Others who have wages as high as we do and standards of living as high as we have are managing it. If we had a good mix of manufactured items and services that were sought after by others in the world along with the natural resources we have our dollar would not be continuously collapsing as it is once again.

We need to put more horses into the race of world trade to hedge our bets. Simple thing to understand.

“Look at China it’s falling apart economically”

It is slowing down because the rest of the world that buys from them is slowing down. In the third quarter of 2015, gdp growth slowed to 6.9% … so what other countries have those kind of growth rates?

As the economic news reports state, much of China’s slowdown over the past five years is self-imposed as the government tries to steer the economy to more self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption and service industry instead of trade and investment.

I think Canada could use some of that kind of thinking rather than being hooked on cheap foreign products and services.

For instance, move the call centres back to Canada, if that has not already been done.

We are selling limited energy resources at deflated prices because we are hooked on that as much as we are hooked on buying “stuff” from foreign countries that we could make for our domestic market instead.