a bunch of sissy bleeding hearts-let the jobs roll-if i had a free cheque every month i wouldnt care about big oil either.there are demands or special construction/maintenance safety percautions that can be developed or written into the construction aggrement. the world is full of earth quakes,fires,mountains,rivers and such always has and always will be . will it cost more to construct and maintain ,yes-that the cost of doing buisness. pipe-away

Ewart: Every time you open your word processor the sky is falling - please feel free to continue to speak at gatherings of the Communist Party of Canada....we who have studied Mainstream Economics understand the need for Multinationals/NGO's! Please keep your fear mongering/conspiracy theories for the Communist Party of Canada Lecture circuit.

Peter Ewart:- "Why are we shipping so much out of the country raw and unprocessed? Why are we not using this resource to build up an advanced petrochemical industry? Governments and Big Oil spend endless days and years discussing how to extract the resource and ship it out of the country as fast as possible, but very little time on how we can use it to deepen and broaden our manufacturing base."
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Quite simple, really. If all costs are included in price, the price can't be paid. Why? Because current labour costs (as consumer incomes) are, for the vast majority of Canadians, their main source of income. And current labour costs are only a PART, and an ever diminishing part, of all the costs that go into prices.

The OTHER PART is represented by what we call Capital Costs.
These costs WERE, at some time in the PAST, someone's income. But, for the most part, they were spent as received AT THAT TIME.

Aside from the miniscule portion of them that was 'saved', they represent costs entering prices which no longer exist in the form of 'money'.

Look at the way the modern industrial economy operates. The starting point for every new construction is when the Banking system creates the money to get the job underway. Loans create deposits, the repayment of those loans destroys those deposits. What is issued in credit to industry by the Banks, becomes the costs of industry as it is paid out. And as it is paid out, it becomes someone's income.

The subsequent spending of those incomes in meeting the prices of goods and services produced or provided liquidates the costs, and the business repays what it has borrowed. An individual 'production cycle' is complete when the 'production' becomes final 'consumption'.

The problem nowadays is that the whole structure of production is continually lengthening and broadening through increasing division of process, and the introduction of ever more complex processes.

So when a company like Enbridge, say, initiates its pipeline construction, a great deal of money will be paid out in the course of that construction well BEFORE there are any 'products' from that construction that will ever be 'consumed'by anyone.

This spending of this money will raise the prices of products already on the market for consumption, and an illusion of prosperity will be created.

The negative effect is that the Capital costs included in the prices of THOSE products will be recovered in prices at a far faster rate than the actual 'Capital'(plant and equipment by which thety were made) depreciates.

This 'money' will return to the Banks, and to cancellation as 'money' as the loan/deposit from which it sprang is eliminated. But the cost it created remains in prices. For which ANOTHER sum of money will have to be accessed to finally cancel.

That sum will come from further loans, for more capital intensive projects, or from export credits from another credit area.

So, while we could certainly build up our manufacturing base here 'physically', instead of exporting raw materials abroad, we can not do so 'financially', for even if there were REAL consumer demand in Canada for the products of our own industry, (which there no doubt is), we do not, under the current system of finance, ever have enough money in the hands of consumers to make those demands fully effective.

Well,Peter, you certainly scared the redneck yahoos out of the woodwork, judging from the first couple of comments.
These good folk don't seem to care about their progeny having access to clean water and wilderness as long as they can secure short-term jobs to finance their ATVs and pickup trucks.
We have a responsibility to coming generations to preserve a decent environment. You did not mention that there seems to be an indecent haste to export a precious natural resource, unprocessed yet, that will be needed by future Canadians living in a land of great distances and cold climate.
Keep the oil in the ground until they need it.

Imagine trying to build a refinery today with all the so called billion dollar multinational greenie groups jumping all over you.

Thank you Peter. I agree with you and I would add three things: 1) the added pressure such a pipeline would lend to the end to the moratorium on oil tanker traffic on the coast ("Once you let Big Oil in . . . ") 2) the added support this would give to the misguided development of the tar sands, and 3) the short-sightedness of investing in a dying industry instead of turning our collective attention to sustainable energy options. I think we should all join the First Nations in their resistance to this.

billion dollar multinational greenie groups? what is this ? example?

Hey, Pete. Didja know if anyone wanted to build the Alaska Highway today, it could never be built? Back in the fourtys the sky wouldn't fall. Why would it fall now? Peculiar mindset some folks have these days.

Kinder Morgan completed a doubling of capacity on their Alberta- Vancouver pipeline in 2008, and plan to double it again to a total capacity of 700,000 barrels a day. If we already have an established pipeline route, why would we jeopardize additional ecosystems through another one? If CN and CP can share railway tracks, then Kinder Morgan and Enbridge could at least share a pipeline route, if not the actual pipeline. Don't put at risk the Skeena, Bulkley, Nechako, and Fraser watersheds just because Enbridge wants to maximize its profits.

No one has explained to me yet how they would clean up an oil spill in an ice covered river. "Wait for spring" is not a suitable answer.

the sky will never fall but one day the oil WILL run out, the more we grow the faster that day will come.
A wise man once said "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" simple high school arithmetic, here's a refresher course if anybody cares.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Enbridge had another pipeline failure Today!

"Didja know if anyone wanted to build the Alaska Highway today, it could never be built? Back in the fourtys the sky wouldn't fall."

Huh????

They thought the sky would fall by way of a Japanese invasion of North America via Alaska. THAT is why the highway was built, to prevent the sky from falling.

It was promoted in the 1920's and took the war to get it built. I was started on March 8, 1942 and completed October 28, of the same year, less than 8 months for 2,200+ km. That is over 5 times the distance from here to Cache Creek. No one gave a chit about where the money came from. It was war. People were afraid the sky was falling.

Oil spill yesterday afternoon, still spilling apparently
http://www.freep.com/article/20100910/NEWS07/100910036/1320/EPA-Enbridge-pipeline-still-leaks-oil-in-Illinois

Well, from http://www.go2hr.ca/BCsTourismbrIndustry/IndustryOverview/TheValueofTourisminBC/tabid/196/Default.aspx tourism is worth about 6 billion and http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/bus_stat/bcea/BCEAchnd.asp oil and gas about 5.5 billion in gdp to the province of B.C. . Logging's worth about 3.5 billion.

Tourism is indefinitely sustainable and as the rest of the world becomes more polluted/crowded its value can only go up.

There are STILL 26 000 gallons of oil left on the beaches in Alaska from the Exxon Valdez, which happened in '89 (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez#cite_note-13).

The choices we make now will effect our children, and their children.

Only one of these industries doesn't have the potential to ruin the others.

You are wrong that is 25,999 gallons.

I don't really see many jobs or great economic spin off coming from this.They will bring in a crew to build the pipeline and then what a dozen or two jobs in the port unloading and loading? The risk is not worth the reward. They should find a alternative route that doesn't pass through such vulnerable eco areas.

We all do need energy it is true and dependence on fossil fuels will live on for at least a few more decades. But this project is corrupt literally from geographical start to finish. It begins with the tar sands which, at least with current technologies, is a process incredibly wasteful of water and disproportionately productive of greenhouse gasses. It ends with fueling the industry of the nation, China,which is using every means to bury western economies - with the complicity and assistance of the likes of Wal-Mart and the average consumer out looking for cheap deals. In between we have a pipeline run by a company which doesn't seem to be able to engineer against serious leaks, and a marine transit corridor through risky channels and precious ecosystems. Talk about the perfect storm of factors combining to make this an ideal project-- to reject!