Deja Vu

Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty and Mark Carney assured us that the economic fundamentals in Canada are sound, despite the current meltdown of international finance capitalism. Wearing Bush/McCain like rose coloured blinders they refuse to admit that Canada faces a pending recession and the government will likely incur a deficit. Something Harper and Flaherty denied during the election campaign. Instead they say steady as she goes.

Of all the leaders, Harper was most determined to stay the course.
"What leaders have to do is have a plan and not panic," he said. Revising the plan
based on new data was considered to be a sign of panic, not prudence.Harper, in
the dying days of the campaign, proclaimed that he would not run a deficit,
raise taxes or cut spending. That may be a difficult circle to square, and those
words may come back to haunt him.

Wait I have heard this before...why in 1929 when then PM William Lyon Mackenzie King said he would stay the course.....

October 24, 1929 went down in history as "Black Thursday". On that day, stock prices plummeted on the New York Stock Exchange, creating a domino effect on world stock markets. It signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.

Canada was one of the hardest hit by the economic crisis. The country relied heavily on its exports. Pulp and paper, wood and wheat represented two-thirds of Canadian exports and accounted for much of the country's prosperity.

Governments in Canada were slow to respond to the desperate economic and social conditions. Until the Great Depression, government intervened as little as possible, letting the free market take care of the economy. Social welfare was left to churches and charities.

When the Depression began William Lyon Mackenzie King was Prime Minister in 1930. He believed that the crisis would pass, refused to provide federal aid to the provinces, and only introduced moderate relief efforts.


Although unemployment was a national problem, federal administrations led by the Conservative R.B. BENNETT (1930-35) and the Liberal W.L. Mackenzie KING (from 1935 onwards) refused, for the most part, to provide work for the jobless and insisted that their care was primarily a local and provincial responsibility. The result was fiscal collapse for the 4 western provinces and hundreds of municipalities and haphazard, degrading standards of care for the jobless.


The Depression altered established perceptions of the economy and the role of the state. The faith shared by both the Bennett and King governments and most economists that a balanced budget, a sound dollar and changes in the tariff would allow the private marketplace to bring about recovery was misplaced.



Library and Archives Canada / C-000623
Bennett Buggy in the Great Depression in Canada


October 1929 – Stock Market Crash: Markets Suffer the Worst Losses in Canadian History
In the late 1920s, Canada’s economy and stock exchanges were booming. From 1921 to the autumn of 1929, the level of stock prices increased more than three times. But these heady days came to a swift end with the stock market crash on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, in New York, Toronto, Montréal and other financial centres in the world. Shareholders panicked and sold their stock for whatever they could get.
Overnight, individuals and companies were ruined. It was estimated that Canadian stocks lost a total value of $5 billion on paper in 1929. By mid-1930, the value of stocks for the 50 leading Canadian companies had fallen by over 50% from their peaks in 1929.
The stock market collapse affected all investors—individuals who had been persuaded to buy shares as well as speculators looking to make a fast dollar. Despite the market crash, 1929 was a good year for banks, mines, manufacturing and construction in Canada. All reported record profits at year-end.
Although the crash was sudden and deep, there were signs that it was coming. Earlier in 1929, stock prices had been volatile. Economic slowdowns in May and June hinted that the booming economy was heading for a recession. Export earnings were declining and the price of wheat plummeted.
Economists and historians are still debating what caused the crash. At the time of the crash, Canada had no monetary policy or central bank, so there was little government intervention in the market. (See 1934—Bank of Canada.) Canadian firms had healthy profits and did not expect the boom to end. Corporate profit expectations were inflated. Canadian corporations took advantage of the bull market to issue new stock, which overheated the supply. Banks gave out easy and cheap credit, and let people buy stocks on margin: buyers paid only a fraction of the share price and borrowed the rest. Speculation was rampant: bidding drove up the value of stocks as much as 40 times the companies’ annual earnings. Investors seemed to pay less attention to corporate earnings than to how much their shares would appreciate in value.
The economy could not sustain its rapid growth and the bubble burst. Investors lost confidence in the market. In the United States, the government was blamed for not controlling the speculative frenzy. Because Canada’s economy was so closely tied to that of the United States, the New York crash brought down Canadian markets, too.
It is widely felt that the stock market collapse started a chain of events that plunged Canada and the Western world into the decade-long Great Depression, which ended only with the outbreak of the Second World War.

1929 - 1939 —The Great Depression.
The Roaring Twenties saw boom times in Canada. Unemployment was low; earnings for individuals and companies were high. But prosperity came to a halt with the stock market collapse in New York, Toronto, Montréal and around the world in October 1929. The crash set off a chain of events that plunged Canada and the world into a decade-long depression. It was the beginning of the Dirty Thirties.
The Great Depression caused Canadian workers and companies great hardship. Prices deflated rapidly and deeply. Business activity fell sharply. There was massive unemployment—27% at the height of the Depression in 1933. Many businesses were wiped out: in Canada, corporate profits of $396 million in 1929 became corporate losses of $98 million in 1933. Between 1929 and that year, the gross national product dropped 43%. Families saw most or all of their assets disappear. Governments around the world, including Canada’s, put up high tariffs to protect their domestic manufacturers and businesses, but that only created weaker demand and made the Depression worse. Canadian exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to 1933.

THE CAUSE OF THE DEPRESSION
Many Canadians of the thirties felt that the depression wasn't brought about by the Wall Street Stock Market Crash, but by the enormous 1928 wheat crop crash. Due to this, many people were out of work and money and food began to run low. It was said by the Federal Department of Labor that a family needed between $1200 and $1500 a year to maintain the "minimum standard of decency." At that time, 60% of men and 82% of women made less than $1000 a year. The gross national product fell from $6.1 billion in 1929 to $3.5 billion in 1933 and the value of industrial production halved.
Unfortunately for the well being of Canada's economy prices continued to plummet and they even fell faster then wages until 1933, at that time, there was another wage cut, this time of 15%. For all the unemployed there was a relief program for families and all unemployed single men were sent packing by relief officers by boxcar to British Columbia. There were also work camps established for single men by Bennett's Government.
The Great Depression, also known as The Dirty Thirties, wasn't like an ordinary depression where savings vanished and city families went to the farm until it blew over. This depression effected everyone in some way and there was basically no way to escape it. J.S. Woodsworth told Parliament "If they went out today, they would meet another army of unemployed coming back from the country to the city." As the depression carried on 1 in 5 Canadians became dependent on government relief. 30% of the Labour Force was unemployed, where as the unemployment rate had previously never dropped below 12%.

It was estimated back in the thirties that 33% of Canada's Gross National Income came from exports; so the country was also greatly affected by the collapse of world trade. The four western prairie provinces were almost completely dependent on the export of wheat. The little money that they brought in for their wheat did not cover production costs, let alone farm taxes, depreciation and interest on the debts that farmers were building up. The net farm income fell from $417 million in 1929 to $109 million in 1933.


Canada suffered a major depression from 1929 to 1939. In terms of output it was
similar to the Great Depression in the United States. However, total factor productivity
(TFP) in Canada did not recover relative to trend, while in the United States TFP had
recovered by 1937. We find that the neoclassical growth model, with TFP treated as
exogenous, can account for over half of the decline in output relative to trend in Canada.
In contrast, we find that conventional explanations for the Great Depression - monetary
shocks, terms of trade shocks and labor market and competition policies – do not work
for Canada.

Our conclusion is that the reason that Canadian output per adult was still 30 percent below
trend in 1938 was that productivity failed to return to trend.

Relative to trend, consumption fell more in Canada, and remained below that of
the United States throughout the 1930s. Investment in Canada fell to 15 percent of its
trend value by 1933, and recovered very slowly in both countries (remaining roughly 50
percent below trend in 1939). Government purchases in the two countries followed a
similar pattern during the downturn, before diverging in the late 1930s when U.S.
government spending remained above trend, while in Canada it fluctuated about trend.

U.S. government output increased more relative to trend
than Canadian government output. A large part of the difference in government
expenditure can be attributed to different government policies towards providing
unemployment relief. In the United States, the government relied much more heavily
upon make-work projects (government relief projects) than in Canada. The fraction of the
workforce employed by the government doubled in the United States, while increasing by
less than 50 percent in Canada. The increase in U.S. government employment was mainly
due to public works, as nearly 7 percent of U.S. employment in the late 1930s was in
relief projects. Relief workers were never more than 1.5 percent of the total number of
employed people in Canada.

Canada was the first country to leave the gold standard, suspending gold
shipments in January 1929 (Bordo and Redish (1990)). Despite the suspension of
convertibility, the Canadian government took steps to prevent depreciation of the dollar,
motivated in part by a wish to maintain access to American capital markets to refinance
Dominion debt (Shearer and Clark (1984)). As a result, the government maintained the
advance rate at its 1928 level throughout 1930, despite the fall in world rates. This policy
was ultimately abandoned in 1931. Despite this, the Canadian dollar did depreciate
relative to the U.S. dollar by approximately 15 percent between 1929 and 1931, before
recovering to its 1929 level in 1935.

The “debt-deflation” view of the Great Depression asserts that deflation and high
private debt levels contributed to the Great Depression by reducing borrower wealth and
constraining lending. Haubrich (1990) argues that the debt crisis was much less severe in
Canada than in the United States. He argues that there is little evidence to suggest that the
debt crisis caused the Great Depression in Canada.

A common view is that banking crisis played a significant role in transforming the
1929 downturn into the Great Depression. For example, Bernanke (1983) states that “the
financial crisis of 1930-33 affected the macroeconomy by reducing the quantity of
financial services, primarily credit intermediation” (p. 262). As has been pointed out by
numerous authors, however, Canada did not experience any bank failures.

Can the usual explanations of the Great Depression account for the Great
Depression in Canada? Our answer to this question is no. As we show, money shocks,
policy shocks and terms of trade shocks cannot account for the 10-year depression.
Explanations based on these shocks fail because their effects are quantitatively too small
to explain the Great Depression.

Our findings in this paper tell us where to go next. Future research into the Great
Depression in Canada should focus on models in which changes in the level of trade
affect the level of productivity. Such models are consistent with the fact that Canada’s
TFP and trade both declined from 1929 to 33. Beginning in 1934, trade began to slowly
recover, and so did TFP. This also matches the fact that the only large shock that hit
Canada but not the United States was trade, while the main difference in macro
performance is the behavior of productivity.

Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E30, N12, N42.
Key Words: Great Depression, Canada, productivity, terms of trade, deflation

Community Voices
GWINNETT COUNTY: Depression days brought to mind
By Rick Badie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Elwood Hart lived in Canada during the Great Depression. He considers himself lucky. A Salvation Army was next to the family’s home in Hamilton, Ontario.
“Maybe it was a bowl of soup or a bologna sandwich, but I got something to eat,” said Hart, now a Lawrenceville resident. “If it weren’t for that, I don’t think we could have ever made it. We weren’t living in the United States, but the situation was the same all over.”
Comparisons and contrasts are being drawn between the current economic crisis and the Great Depression. Conventional wisdom says this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Generally, experts say the odds of a full-blown depression are nonexistent. Let’s hope they are right.
Not many of us were around between 1929 and 1939, so we can’t compare the impact of that period’s economic crisis to today’s turmoil. Hart is now in his mid-80s, so his take on what he saw then and what he sees now carries weight.
We met years ago at the Gwinnett County Veterans War Museum, where his military career is on display. He served with the Canadian Army in Normandy during World War II. With the U.S. Army, he saw two tours of duty in Korea and Vietnam. He received an honorable discharge in 1967.
As for the Great Depression, “I remember it well,” Hart said. “People don’t realize what it was like back then.”
He remembers people lining up at food banks to get a hunk of cheese and powdered milk. He remembers stuffing newspapers in his shoes because they were way too big. And he remembers a white pet rabbit that just disappeared one day.
“I got up one morning and asked my dad where my rabbit was,” Hart told me. “He said, ‘It’s down your stomach. You had it for dinner.’ You ate anything you could get back then. There was no waste of clothes or food. Today, when I throw out trash, wild animals won’t find any food. I don’t throw it away.”
But how does that compare to today’s economic woes, particularly among everyday people barely making it?
Every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning, Hart drives to a local Publix to load his car with day-old breads, cakes and pastries. When he pulls up to the Salvation Army, where the goods are doled out, people are waiting.
“It’s gotten so bad right now that there are twice as many every day as there were a couple of months ago,” he said. “In fact, it’s so bad that, a lot of time, me or some of the women in the church have to stand there. We have a sign that says everyone is to get two loaves of bread and a pastry. If you don’t watch them, they will fill up on all they can get. That’s why I say things are getting bad, similar to the 1930s, I tell you.”
As a brass collector, Hart routinely visits Goodwill stores in search of treasures. He said he’s seen a noticeable uptick in the number of people buying clothes. And at his church, clothes donations have fallen off considerably.
“It’s not that bad yet now,” Hart said.
“But it’s getting there.”

SEE:

No Austrians In Foxholes
CRASH
Black Gold
The Return Of Hawley—Smoot
Canadian Banks and The Great Depression
Bank Run
U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone


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No Austrians In Foxholes

The old joke goes there are no athiests in foxholes. With the crash of international financial capitalism there are no Austrians in foxholes. Capitalism rushes to the embrace of it's state to bail it out. Everyone now accepts that State Capitalism resulted from the previous Great Depression and in order to avoid another one, the State is required to save the financial market. Some American libertarians and conservatives decried the state bail out of the banks, but no rational self interested capitalist was listening to them.

Nor contrary to some wags were they thumbing through the Communist manifesto to find a solution. They simply were returning to their Keynesian roots, apologizing abjectly for their folly of declaring him dead and useless.

Suddenly the darlings of the neo-cons, Ayn Rand, von Mises and Hyaek, were no longer the belle's of the ball. They once again quickly became relegated to the dustbing of history. Once again an anomaly of booming capitalism, a joyful ideology for those who embraced the greed of an unregulated market, an excuse to line pockets of the wealthy while ignoring the neccisity of producing real value; goods, services, infrastructure. Today the bankers and financiers are now fully fledged Keyensians.

In the Nouvel Observateur weekly, columnist Jacques
Julliard rejoiced that France was no longer hearing “diatribes” against its
“archaic” system.“Where have the (economic)
liberals gone?” he asked. “Since Bush nationalized the American banking system
we don’t hear from them anymore.

Even the most stalwart follower of Ayn Rand has admitted the failure of her ideology.

Alan
Greenspan is having a crisis of faith.
The former chairman of the Federal
Reserve and long-time deregulator admitted to U.S. lawmakers yesterday he "made
a mistake" in assuming banks could self-regulate the complex derivatives
market.
It was an about-face for Mr. Greenspan, a diehard supporter of
deregulation. He was a close friend of Ayn Rand, the most notable of
libertarians who champion the individual over the state. Yesterday, he threw her
theories under the bus, but it was no shock to Ms. Rand's followers.

It is in fact startling to hear the right wing President of France sounding like a socialist, but not unexpected given the gravitas of the current crisis.

"The
idea of the all-powerful market that must not be constrained by any rules,
by any political intervention, was mad. The idea that markets were always right
was mad," Mr Sarkozy said. "The present crisis must incite us to refound
capitalism on the basis of ethics and work & Self-regulation as a way of
solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful
market that always knows best is finished," he added.

In fact it appears that the only ones proclaming the joys of unregulated markets are those from the Eastern Bloc, former communists and socialists who have never experienced the joys of American capitalism in all its gory glory.

In a
letter published on Tuesday by the daily Mladá fronta Dnes, Czech
President
Václav Klaus says that the global financial crisis did not result
from
insufficient market regulation, but, on the contrary, from excessive
government
interventions and increasing public spending.
According to
Klaus, there is a
risk that the rescue packages proposed by some governments
will turn the
European banking system into a partially state-owned and
centrally regulated
sector.

Ironic that. He sounds like Bush, Paulson, and Greenspan prior to the crash. They now have abandoned their faith in self regulated markets, and have embraced the need for state capitalism; a regulated capitalism supported by huge investments of public funds.

"I
know many Americans have reservations about the government's
approach,
especially about allowing the government to hold shares in private
banks. As
a strong believer in free markets, I would oppose such measures under
ordinary circumstances. But these are not ordinary circumstances," Bush
said.

But in reality the state promoted the ideals of the financial and monopoly capitalists as their own, they did their bidding, even as they do it now. Its about power in and over the markets. There never was an unbridled capitalism of small self employed artisans, which is the libertarian ideal, in fact capitalism is not about work or business, but about accrual of capital for its own sake.

Whether it was Keynes and the social contract after WWII or the shift towards monetarist policies and free trade in the seventies, eighties and ninties, it was all done by the capitalist state, in order to maintain and stabilize capitalism.

The mistake made by the left and the right was to assume that state capitalism was 'socialism'.

This mistaken link between public ownership and socialism was the result of the ideologues of the 2nd International, who adovcated that capitalism would evolve into socialism, that is public capitalism would arise from private monopoly capitalism.

After the Bolshevik revolution, and the subsequent Great Depression, capitalism was in a historical crisis, its old models no longer sufficient to meet the demands of those who create capital, the working class. Class war was on the horizon, the final death knell of capitalism was being wrung by a mobilized militant working class and by the failure of financial capitals coinciding.

The capitalist state was reformed to meet this crisis,based on variations of models of Keynes General Theory. State Capitalism is the highest form of capitalism, and that is what Randites and Austrian School apologists forgot.

Is this ciris out of the ordinary as Bush claims? Was i unpredicatable as Greenspan and Volker claim. Why no. Many pundits have pointed ot the similarities of this crash to those in the past; some going as far back as the Great Crash of 1873 in the U.S., the Great Depression of 1931-33, the 1973 post Viet Nam war crash.

What do all these crashes have in common? They occurred in relation to rapid industrialization of economies during and after large scale wars. In the case of 1873, it occurred after the civil war destroyed the last of the small scale artisinal base of American industry replacing family shoe making businesses and the like with large scale factory production.

The Great Depression occurred after WWI and the 1973 crash occurred as a result of America's incurssion into Viet Nam.

At the begining of the Bush regime in the U.S. the Republican government went from having a surplus to having a deficit. And those wags on the right, the very same neo-cons who a decade before had deonounced government deficits that led to expanded public sector infrastructure growth, now were cheering on the Bush government to expand its deficit especially when it came to planning for war against Afghanistan and then Iraq.

The wat in Iraq led to a government deficit that dwarfs those of the seventies and eighties.

That is the elephant in the room. America celebrated like it was 1929 for eight years under Bush, while sending their sons and dughters to fight in a foriegn war. There was no war rationing, no draft call, no need to commit by Joe or Jane Yank to Bush's war. So it was party time back home.

America also ended it dominance in manufacturing and actual production during the Reagan era. As we entered the new millineum right wing libertarian mags like Reason praised the end of America's dominance in production claiming the new capitalism in America would be based on service sector jobs.

And they were partially right. With contracting out and offshoring an essential part of the New World Order of the WTO and expanding globalization of capital, America now found itself no longer manufacturing goods at home, but buying them at WalMart from newly emerging fordist economies in Asia.

Americans laid off in manufacturing ended up in low paid jobs selling products they once made at the local WalMart. America now relied upon its citizens to produce capital not through manufacturing but through consumption.

America made credit easily available, and American's liquidated their savings in an orgy of spending that kept America going for the past eight years.

Was this crash unexpected? Of course not. It began a year ago, but Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, Bernake, and the right wing neo-cons were in denial. I have blogged as have others predicting this crash. That it would be as serious as the Great Depressions of 1873 and 1933 was also not unexpected, nor was the fact that the monopoly and financial capitalists flight back into the safe arms of the Nanny State unexpected.

There are no Austrians in foxholes when the economy melts down. Ideology is tossed out and capitalists and their politicians once again embrace state capitalism to bail them out.


SEE:

CRASH
Black Gold
The Return Of Hawley—Smoot
Canadian Banks and The Great Depression
Bank Run
U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone


Tags

asset-backed commercial paper ,, goldhomes, mortgages, housing, bubble, US, economy, oil prices, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,Bernanke, Inflation, Staglation, Stock-Market, US, Federal-Reserve-Chairman, Oil, gold, commoditiesSmoot-Hawley, protectionism, tariffs, Herbert Hoover, U.S., U.S. economy, Canada, Great Depression, John McCain, market crash, free trade, Republicans, recession,

Forget Ike It's PetroCan's Fault

P.O. about the 13 cent rise in gasoline prices at the pump last Friday. Don't blame hurricane Ike, rather it was exasperated by the shut down of Petrocan here in Edmonton. The plant has been offline since July!

September 15, 2008

Petro-Canada Refinery Shutdown Causes Shortage Petro-Canada, Canada's second- largest refiner, said filling stations in Alberta and British Columbia may run out of fuel after the unexpected shutdown of a unit at its Edmonton, Alberta, refinery. The company is investigating the reason for the closing of the catalytic cracking unit, a gasoline-producing piece of equipment, according to a Bloomberg report. Petro-Canada spokesperson Jon Hamilton said the reduction in gasoline could last several weeks as the company fixes the unit. "It could be short term, it could be a little longer," Hamilton said. "We're looking at, I'd say, weeks not days, right now." Gasoline shortages may occur in parts of British Columbia's so-called interior region and Alberta, Petro-Canada said in a statement. The Calgary-based company said it's trying to boost supplies in Canada's western provinces partly by buying fuel from rivals. Deliveries to some customers and filling stations have been curbed, Hamilton said without providing details. "The deliveries that we're sending out are reduced from what they would normally get,'' he said. "That might mean a smaller load or that might mean less frequent loads." The company intends to import more supplies to its port terminal in Vancouver and truck the fuel to customers, Hamilton said. Petro-Canada also is altering its distribution network across the country to boost supply in western Canada. The equipment failure is unrelated to a C$2.2 billion ($2.07 billion) modification project nearing completion at the plant. Parts of the refinery were scheduled to be shuttered for about two months starting this month so that the plant can run on crude extracted from Alberta's oil sands. Output at the refinery was cut last month because of a water-boiler equipment problem. The plant is capable of processing 135,000 barrels a day. Imperial Oil Ltd. of Calgary is Canada's largest refiner and marketer.

Since Petrocan, Shell and Imperial Oil are the area's main refiners losing Petrocan put pressure on their retail outlets. Of course this should have been predicated. Add to that the shut down of East Coast gasoline due to Ike and you have the perfect storm.

In March, a shut down at Imperial's 187,000-barrel-a-day Strathcona refinery near Edmonton caused gasoline shortages at Esso stations throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. and Manitoba.

Around the same time, Shell Canada Ltd. said its Scotford refinery and upgrader near Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., were operating at reduced rates because of unplanned maintenance.

Last year, Ontarians experienced gasoline shortages for several weeks after a fire at Imperial's Nanticoke refinery.

Canada's refining infrastructure is aging, but companies are not keen on investing in new facilities, said Roger McKnight, an energy analyst with Oshawa, Ont.-based consulting firm En-Pro.

Not only would it would take up to 10 years and billions of dollars to build a new refinery, but they would tilt the market against the companies' favour.

"Their refining margins would drop because of excess supply. So there's no incentive at all for them to do that," McKnight said.

Another factor discouraging the industry from spending money on new refineries is uncertainty about government regulations.

"If I was an oil company, I would like to know in 10 years, when I'm going to have this refinery built, what the eventual specs are going to be and what the emission standards are going to be," McKnight said.

As for the solution it is as clear as the nose on Uncle Ed's face, we need more refinery capacity in Alberta and Canada. Of course given the anti regulatory anti-public ownership attitude of Big Oil and its government in Alberta that ain't gonna happen any time soon.


And so we have gasoline shortages on refinery row.

Back in August, it was Petro-Canada. Now, it’s Shell that has run out of gasoline at some of its Alberta stations.

In Medicine Hat, the Shell stations on Dunmore Road and Eighth St. NW have been out of gas since Friday, while the Shell on South Railway had gas as of Monday but wasn’t sure how long its supplies would last. Shell stations on Redcliff Drive SW and Trans-Canada Way were reporting they still have gas.

Jana Masters, spokesperson for Shell Canada, said there are also a couple of stations in Calgary and Edmonton that are running on empty.

“But these are very small numbers compared to our total operations across the province,” she said.

While the Petro-Canada gas shortage in August had to do with a problem at that company’s refinery, Masters said that is not the case at Shell.

“It’s just a temporary challenge keeping up to customer demand,” Masters said.

It is the lack of tertiary refining that causes gasoline shortages in Canada and subsequently price increases. And wqe won't get more refineries built until there is a national initiative to make it so including a Green Plan.

Call it a Green National Energy Program. If you want to end price gouging lets have a made in Canada Energy Plan that includes increased bitumin processing and tertiary refining capacity.

Of course others have solutions too, like importing more dirty gas from the U.S. but that is all refined in Hurricane Alley, and we know what that means. 13 cent price increases in one day.

Petro-Canada said it’s pulling out all the stops to make sure supplies of gasoline keep flowing.

Company officials said on Petro-Canada’s website that it was able to use trucks to ship approximately 200,000 litres of gasoline per day from its Vancouver storage facility last week, but that volume has now more than quadrupled.

That’s been partially accomplished by hiring truckers from Ontario to move more product, Stevens said.

The company is also trying to find rail cars that could be pressed into service to deliver gasoline to destinations in B.C. and Alberta.

The company also is trying to boost its gasoline supplies by looking to its other Canadian refineries and to the United States and overseas, Stevens said.

An industry group that represents independent gasoline retailers is calling for a harmonization of gasoline standards between Canada and the U.S., which would allow for more importation of American products during shortages.

Canadian gasoline has hard caps on sulphur and benzene levels in gasoline, which prevents the importation of the product from the U.S. to ease any shortages, said Dave Collins, a director with the Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association.

"It’s great if you’re a refinery because it blocks competition and helps you keep our prices up," he said in an interview from Halifax.

"But it’s not good for consumers and, at times like this, it’s not good for our operations either because we can’t get any gas," he said.

The federal government’s failure to ease importation restrictions means such shortages will likely happen again, Collins said.

Of course the solution is not unrestricted trade with the U.S. for dirty gas, rather the solution was in hand until the Liberals under Paul Martin sold off the last of Canadians taxpayers shareholdings in Petrocan.There is a solution to price gouging, that is worker and community control of the refineries.


SEE:

It's Time to Take Back Our Oil and Gas

NDP And Workers Control

Nationalize the Oil Industry

The Myth of the NEP

Aren't you sorry you sold your shares

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Albertans Want Oil Sands Moratorium

It's not just folks out east who want a moratorium on oil sands development, Albertans do to. Jack was right.

While 56 per cent of respondents are worried about the impact of oilsands development on the environment, more than seven in 10 said they're worried about the health impacts.

A slim majority of Albertans (51 per cent) don't want the federal government to intervene to protect the environment affected by the oilsands, fitting with many Albertans' long-standing dislike of having outsiders interfere with what is seen as a domestic affair. But 42 per cent want Ottawa to become involved.

A sizable majority of Albertans (63 per cent) do not agree the Alberta government is adequately protecting the air, land and water affected by oilsands developments. Only 29 per cent of Albertans say they think the government is doing a good enough job.

One in five say the provincial government is doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while nearly six in 10 say they are not. Twenty per cent of respondents say they don't know. The federal government receives a similarly poor review.

Seven in 10 young people between the ages of 18 and 34 say the province and Ottawa are not doing enough.

The poll found 88 per cent of respondents think the oilsands are important to Alberta's economic development.

And we are still waiting to get our fair share of royalties to pay for all the environmental and health impacts of the tarsands.



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The Failure of Privatization

The collapse of Fannie May and Freddie Mac, the American government mortgage lending institutions,is a clear admission of the failure of the neo-con agenda of privatization.

While right wing pundits like to refer to the government bail out of Fannie and Freddie as 'nationalization', this is a red herring. Fannie May was created by the FDR government because of the economic collapse of the great depression. It was always a state capitalist institution.

In the seventies the neo-con think tanks promoted 'competition' and the Nixon government created a state funded shareholder corporation to compete with Fannie called Freddie Mac.

Under Reagan the neo-cons were in full control and privatized Fannie May making it a shareholder based corporation, but still with state capitalist gurantees that the government would back their investments.

Last week the Bush administration admited that privatization had failed and bailed out Fannie and Freddie.

In a further irony state capitalist funds (called soverign investment funds) from China, India ,Singapore, and Dubai Inc. are being promoted as a way of bailing out the current failing private banks in the U.S.; Lehman Brothers and Merril Lynch.

The irony in this is that the greatest accumulation of wealth in the world currently is not on Wall Street, which is bleeding, but in China, where trillions of dollars remain in that countries Foriegn Investment Fund. As they do in the Middle East.

While the neo-cons denounced Keyensianism as a failure, the social contract that built modern post war capitalism in the West, lasted sixty years. The neo-con agenda of the Cato Institute and its like lasted a mere twenty years and led to two major Wall Street crashes, first in 1987 and now the down turn we have had for the past two years.

And of course those businesses that called for unregulated markets and getting government out of the way of business are now the same folks calling for regulation and lining up at the doors of the State with their hands out.


SEE:

Black Gold

The Return Of Hawley—Smoot

Canadian Banks and The Great Depression

Bank Run

U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone

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Rahim Worried

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Signs Lyrics by Five Man Electrical Band

Week one of the hottest election contest in Edmonton. I am speaking of course of my riding Edmonton Strathcona where Linda Duncan of the NDP is running again against the incumbent Rahim (dolittle) Jaffer.

And is Rahim worried? You bet. In the past Rahim has waited to put up signs in front of houses, relying instead on his landlord business pals to put up big signs on their buildings.
But last week, he was out with lawn signs, as was Linda.

If the battle of the signs is any indication, this will be a close race.
Though as an old pal of mine once said; boulevards don't vote, belittling the impact of lawn signs in public space rather than in front of houses. A message that seems lost on the Liberal candidate Claudette Roy who has few lawn signs up in front of homes relying instead on littering the 99th St. hill with her signs.



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Elizabeth May Progressive au contraire

Contrary to the current political myth that Elizabeth May and her Green Party will take votes from the left, ie. the NDP in reality they are a right wing party, and will take votes from the Tories.

Tom Flanagan: Yes, the Greens are mainly a threat to the other parties of the left, especially the NDP. The Conservatives lost some supporters to the Greens at the time of the merger (2003), but that's ancient history now. Elizabeth May doesn't threaten Stephen Harper; she threatens Jack Layton and his attempt in this election to displace the Liberals as the Official Opposition.

May herself may want to focus on the environment, but her passion for putting her foot in her mouth will be challenged when she gets into the debates.

Like this little jewel which exposes her for being the good Catholic she really wants to be.....,

"I'm against abortion. I don't think a woman has a frivolous right to choose".

She has denied that she said 'frivolous' just like she has denied she has called Canadians 'stupid'.

The Youtube controversy was created by Blogging Tory founder Stephen Taylor, showing that the Conservatives are worried about the impact of May on their voters.

But backpeadling when your words are in print or on YouTube, further shows her lack of political maturity.

Now that she is in the leaders debate I frankily look forward to May sticking her foot in it again. And au contraire her impact will be greater on the Liberals and Conservatives more than it will hurt Jack Layton and the NDP.


See:

Green Party

Elizabeth May

Peter MacKay


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Carpenters Union Defines Business Unionism

Faced with corporatist labour management counsultants from CLAC who promote collaboration with Merit Shops (non-union open shops in construction trades) the Carpenters Union are promoting themselves as the alternative.

Contrary to the article below this is not new at all its the return of Gomperism...the Carpenters Union see's its business partners as 'clients' and see's its role as a partner in capitalism, selling labour to the highest bidder. So long Class War.

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit

The more thoroughly the workers are organized and federated the better they are prepared to enter into a contest, and the more surely will conflicts be averted. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that militant trade unionism is essential to industrial peace.

What we have endeavored to secure in industrial relations is industrial peace.

Samuel Gompers President, American Federation of Labour

After all Peter McGuire, Gompers pal, was the Canadian born President of the Carpenters Union, and he and Sam gave us Labour Day to undermine the more radical May Day which arose after the Haymarket Massacre. So the idea of selling labour to the highest bidder is nothing new for the Carpenters Union. Just as business unionism has always clashed with those who believe that the purpose of unions of workers is to challenge capitalism.

What is interesting in this story as well is that their centre is Green...that is it uses geothermal energy in oil rich Alberta. Now did they also build with recycled components?

Carpenters build for construction boom
Union unveils $21M west-end facility for training, updating workers
David Finlayson, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, September 12

EDMONTON - A $21-million new training centre and talk of long-term partnerships with "clients" -- welcome to the carpenters union of the new millennium as it positions itself as a major stakeholder in the booming construction industry.

"Times have changed, and we're not the union of old," says Martyn Piper, executive secretary-treasurer of the

Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers, which has 11,500 members.
"First and foremost we represent our people, but we also provide a service for our clients.

"They want safe and productive people when they need them, and our new training centre will help us do that."

The geothermally heated and cooled west-end centre will provide training and updating for carpenters, scaffolders, millwrights, industrial roofers and floor layers, and interior systems installers -- all in high demand amid the frantic oilsands and other industrial construction activity.

While the priority is to train Alberta's young people, scaffolders are in such short supply the union has brought in 2,500 workers from across Canada, as well as the U.S. and the U.K.

Already, 450 Americans are at various northern Alberta sites and that will rise to 1,000 in the next few weeks.

The union has a working relationship with its Irish counterparts to bring people over on temporary worker permits, and Piper soon will be going on a recruiting trip to England.

They've worked hard with Ottawa to smooth out the entry system, but it's still a slow process, he says.

Scaffolding's become an important job as large industrial complexes recognize the need to give workers a safe working platform, Piper says, and the new training shop is arguably the best in the world, certainly the best in North America.

It's a three-year apprenticeship, and many workers enrol in both the carpentry and scaffolding programs, he says.

In the millwright shop, workers can learn how to install and service a giant, modern hydrogen compressor donated by Petro-Canada.

The centre, which can accommodate about 200 trainees on any given day, consolidates five separate facilities the union had around the city, including administrative offices.

There's plenty of room on the site for expansion as needed, Piper says.

The new partnership and training philosophy came from the union's Washington, D.C-based international president Douglas McCarron, who believes it has to be run like a business for the best interests of the industry as a whole.

The Edmonton centre is a smaller version of one built in Las Vegas by McCarron, here today for the official opening.

Piper says changing times for unions call for new approaches, especially with the number of open-shop contractors in Alberta, and the inroads being made by the Christian Labour Association of Canada.

"They are exciting -- and challenging -- times. And we believe we have a functional, modest facility that meets the needs of industry and which our members can be proud of."

dfinlayson@thejournal.canwest.com


© The Edmonton Journal 2008

See:

Unions the State and Capital

This is Class War

Unions




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Yep I am Back

As you can tell from yesterdays posts I have returned! Aw shucks who could keep away from blogging especially after a week likethis one.

The Conservatives launched their elect Uncle Steve campaign, as in the old Soviet Uncle Joe campaign, showing their Man of Steel to be the kind cuddly family guy (like Peter from Family Guy). Leadership 08 is their their slogean.

Which then blew up in a flight of puffin feathers and communiations team suspensions that showed when Steve ain't the authoritariean strict father,Tory kids playing at politics in his war room get outta control.

So toss out 'the soft and colourful' sweaters and let the real Steve out. The angry man who called this election a year early cause he couldn't get his way in parliment.

The Tories have only just begun their neo-con social re-engineering of Canada with war mongering support of U.S. Imperialism, cuts to womens programs, cuts to arts and culture programs, attacks on Insite, privatization of Atomic Energy Canada, deregulation of Canadian Food Inspection, etc. They want the power to finish the job.

They have drooled and panted for an election since Dion became Liberal leader. And when he failed to bring them down they did the job themselves. Now that's leadership.



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War Monger

Best left wing attack on Harper. Duceppe . On the election announcement night when he called: