Why is it that the Naysayers never have a viable alternative for promoting economics and generating income so that we can sustain our standard of living? They just say NO. The oil industry, the mining industry and the forest industry are the huge generators of the tax money needed to support our system. The self interest groups (Environmentalists,First Nations and all other uninformed doogooders) are always trying to impede and tear these industries to shreads. We can't continue restricting progress. I agree that we need regulations but not to the extent that it brings business to a complete halt. Looks like that's where we are headed. Not a good future for the north.

giterdun..

Its because they have had the luxury to have their cake and eat it too. That havent had to live in true hardship. What has to happen is another great depression to get some people back down to reality so they realize just where the true money comes from when fractional reserve banking fails.

Wow the Enbridge BS machine is gonna be in full swing now.
All ur gonna get from them are the pros.no cons.there record speaks volumes,it sucks!
Put it in thru the U.S.they need it more then we do.

Good! Let the Newfoundland do the oil off shore. The west has the oil sands and that is enough of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Most of the people who do not have work would not get a job with this industry anyway.

Huge mistake.

The best idea I have heard re this pipeline is to build it East to supply our Eastern provinces. They rely on the Middle East for their oil. Canadian resources should be used to supply Canadian needs. Without looking at a globe, I think it may be closer for China to receive their oil from the Middle East than it is it receive it from Fort McMurray. The most responsible thing to do with the tar sands is scale it back to a level where the residues can dealt with at the same pace as they are made.

Yes, Steve. We should be looking to our long term energy needs before supplying China at the expense of our environment. We know Enbridge's record of spills and we would be exchanging our whole northern land's future for a handful of jobs.
We're already risking the entire Mackenzie watershed for the sake of profits for tar sands (Yes, I said "tar" sands) corporations.

"She says contrary to Nathan Cullen’s opening comments to the House of Commons, there is “no imminent risk and threat to B.C.'s north coast"."

Of course the threat is not imminent ....... imminent means that it might occur in the immediate future. That threat does not happen until the pipeline is built, the port facilities are built and the first tanker comes in. likely not till close to 10 years down the road.

BUT, if we start going down that road, the deed is done.

Enbridge is not stupid. Their spin doctors are spinning this for what it is worth and they will not give up.

Full page ad in yesterday's Globe and Mail proclaims.

1. more than $400 million in employment and contracts for Aboriginal communities and business

2. support the $2.6 billion that will be generated in local, provincial and federal government tax revenues

3. support the $270 billion increase in GDP over 30 years.

4. for 25 years, more than 1,500 ships have travelled safely in and out of Kitimat.

All signed by Kinsley.
--------------------
1. Over what period of time? Is this in addition to what they would otherwise earn if the project were not to go ahead?

2. How much of that is for the Prince George area?

3. That is $9 billion per year. Presumably generated primarily at the oil sands but we are not told that in the ad. They are not going to stop production if this line is not put in. It will flow along other competing lines existing or likely to be built elsewhere such as to the refineries in the southern USA since Canada is not building any which I find very strange. The bulk will be heading to the Southern USA. The USA is very dependent on Alberta oil sands oil, even though it is "dirty" oil as they have defined it.

4. So 1,500 have travelled safely. How stupid do they think we are? How do you define "safely"? And how many have not travelled safely? The statement does not say that ALL the ships travelled safely. In the field of safety, close calls are recorded and learned from.

http://www.terracedaily.ca/go4813a/PETERSFIELD_BREAKS_NOSE_LEAVING_KITIMAT
http://northword.ca/february-2010/northwest-coast-tanker-traffic

Here is an enbridge report of what the risks are if there is a spill AT THE TERMINAL!!!! ... so it is not as if they do not expect any.

http://www.ceaa.gc.ca/050/documents_staticpost/cearref_21799/2213/Volume7/Volume_7C.pdf

192 pages long for at the terminal spill, not while the ship is sailing.

Giterdun: "Why is it that the Naysayers never have a viable alternative for promoting economics and generating income so that we can sustain our standard of living"

Why is it that you never listen for the alternative? They are here on this very page!!!

There are many things we can do. They can all be summed up under one principle.

We should not send raw logs out of the country in any significant masses. Neither should we send crude oil out of the country in any significant amount. We should always ask ourselves the question when we export ANY resource, "does it maximize the number of jobs we create at home?"

That gets us into building refineries, producing plastics, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.

We have to get into providing more finished products to the consumers of the world, otherwise we will continue to get the short end of the deal.

Gus.. I agree, but the problem with your theory is that we can't work for 50 cents an hour therefore we can't compete. The only thing that we can do economically and efficiently is to produce raw materials. Could our system survive on those wages? Not a chance. Raw materials can be shipped 4000 miles, manufactured and sent back 4000 miles for a fraction of the cost to produce it here. We are in trouble. so lets face it. We are almost 100% resource based. Manufacturing will not return to North America until we are on economic parity with the east.

No manufacturing will not start again in the west until we are out from being under the thumb of bankster profiteers that subsidize their profits by sending our raw resources over seas to be produced by 50cent an hour workers with no working standards and no environmental standards returning nothing from the communities they harvest from, but misery and desolation.

We have the raw resources to have a first class economy and the only reason we see that slip away is because we are governed by the greed of fractional reserve banking banksters that have a disconnect from their responsibility to the producing industrial economy. This Gateway pipeline of PetreoChina exemplifies that business model, and guys like Colin Kinsley are just the kind of sell out politician they have on their payroll. To be damned with our environment the banksters and their communist sweat shop partners and politicians with no integrity have a business model that works for them.

This pipeline is not our forest industry, and it is not our mining industry, and each should stand on their own merits where many that are responsible do just that.

The alternatives are plenty and abound, but they are stifled by the lax regulations that allow the export of raw unfinished resources subsidized by an HST that robs the efficiency of domestic labor intensive employment, domestic employment which operates at low margins but employs people. If one was to reverse the monopoly capitalist policies one would find we have more than enough domestic wealth and ingenuity to see everyone employed and prospering on a fair free enterprise system. We don't have alternatives because we continue to buy the propaganda of the financiers of bankster monopoly capitalism who will stop at no lengths to threaten and intimidate and yes even hold hostage sectors of our country and economy until they get their way... which doesn't include alternatives.

If Vancouver wants to trade in oil tanker traffic and risk their coastline for nebulous off shore profits, then so be it they have the population base to support that. The north can ill afford the environmental costs of a project like this to subsidize foreign multinational (and worse yet hostile communist Chinese) profits, and we are ill equipped to deal with a toxic unrefined crude oil spill in our rivers and on our coast... especially at this time of the year.

I support the vote in the Parliament, and I suspect the conservative will not... showing how they truly feel about democracy when it interferes with their business.

That said I would support a liquid natural gas line in the north. I would also support adding infrastructure that serves Canadians like a pipeline to Eastern Canada, so that we can get off of the world markets derivative driven insanely leveraged manipulation of our oil resources that is padding the pockets of foreign banksters at our sovereign Canadian working families expense.

I think we need to get a petition of support for the oil line to either Kitmat or Rupert.

It is not about Enbridge. It is about our nation as a whole. It can be Spectra, Pembina, Ecana. What ever pipeline company can not bring oil to the westcoast.

Prince George, the Bulkley valley and the Peace will not benefit a heck of a lot. But it is not always about lining our own pockets. We also need to let the Federal and Provincial Governments pick up the tax money so that we as a whole nation benefits from it.

North America the new energy Kingdom, an interesting read out of the Globe and Mail


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/north-america-the-new-energy-kingdom/article1828896/

Did anyone read the Citizen article on this vote this morning? In it is a sentence that appears to be a statement from Dick Harris saying that "Virtually all the oil from the Alberta oil sands is destined to the USA". If this even remotely true, why do we even need a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat?
And if we're going to remain "hewers of wood and drawers of water", let's not forget that the pristine coastal landscape is rapidly becoming an ever increasingly valuable "commodity", one which can be instantly devalued by an environmental disaster.
Good posts by eagleone and gus, but northman, your idea that 1st Nations have never known real hardship so they need a true depression to teach 'em a good lesson? Wow, did your mom drop you on your head or something?

The Alberta oil sands supply more oil to the USA than Saudi Arabia.

Good one Krusty!

A vote in favor of keeping our oil exports tied 100% to the US market is a vote for closer ties to the American economy. Go ask a logger how well a narrowly diversifiied end-market for lummber worked out for us - I think the current strategy is to promote exports to China for our lumber... Hmmm. Followiing WWII Canada sat at something like 50% of exports to the US - we now sit somewhere near 85% or better. Is it a good idea to reinforce their (US) influence further? What happpens when they decide to put on an import tax on oil knowing full well we can't so anything about it?

A vote in favor of keeping our oil exports tied 100% to the US market is a vote for closer ties to the American economy. Go ask a logger how well a narrowly diversifiied end-market for lummber worked out for us - I think the current strategy is to promote exports to China for our lumber... Hmmm. Followiing WWII Canada sat at something like 50% of exports to the US - we now sit somewhere near 85% or better. Is it a good idea to reinforce their (US) influence further? What happpens when they decide to put on an import tax on oil knowing full well we can't so anything about it?

Yes pg250fan. ... The US certainly has a vested interest in keeping our natural resources for their own use. Corporate America must be looking on with glee as we apparently shoot ourselves in the foot and limit our freedom to market oil to other areas. Some might wonder if Corporate America is even secretly backing and funding the environmental opposition to exports of oil via our west coast.....

Giterdun wrote: "I agree, but the problem with your theory is that we can't work for 50 cents an hour therefore we can't compete"

Well, that is wrong headed thinking. China, India, etc. are very much starting to work smarter. Why are the western European countries, including Scandinavia, able to compete and ship manufactured products to other countries when they are not exactly working for low wages. Far from it. They have had relatively high unemployment compared to the USA and Canada for decades and are still able to support a social net to provide a human living to those not fully employable under a highly mechanized and highly skilled labour condition for their industries.

We are caught in the middle and don't seem to be able to make up our minds who we are actually competing with.

We are managing to upgrade sawmills continuously to produce more with fewer people. We are managing to do the same with car manufacturing, the garment and footwear industry in Quebec is also hanging on, and Bombardier, of course, is also competitive world wide.

But, they all work with improved mechanization, fewer workers, but workers who certainly make a reasonable to an excellent living.

The story is that some industries which were being outscourced are coming back to the USA because the benefits of working off shore are starting to be eroded.

The situation is very dynamic.

The general wisdom in the past has been that Canadians take fewer business risks than Americans south of the border. We also know that the government here provides little incentives to industry when compared to many European countries.

If one wants to compete internationally, one has to have a bit more of a business sense, both the entrepeneurs and the governments.

To say we are competing against $0.50/hour wage is not the full truth and chang very quickly. We are also competing against $40+/hour wages in older industrialized countries whose product names are on the tongues an in LED signs in Asia and the rest of the world.

"What happpens when they decide to put on an import tax on oil"

Hmmm .... lumber they produce in the USA, so the mills they have looked for protection from the feds and got it.

Oil, they no longer are self sufficient in, so they get it from wherever they can, trying now to redcue their dependency on middle east oil.

Canada and Mexico are their most secure sources. Doubt that will change much.

Government gets a good amount of cash from petrolium and must start thinking of getting into building pipelines to the eastern provinces and building refineries to ensure Canadas independance in petrolium markets. This would also produce jobs, something that is much needed accross Canada.

I would love to see the enviro protest over siting a refinery. Who's backyard do you propose to put that in?