Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Nick away. It just seemed concise to me.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

So, what else was he supposed to do? Encourage more high-cost manufacturing that can't compete with China?

Resources are the main thing Canada has which other countries don't. Inevitably they're going to make up a large fraction of the economy. The big problem is that the oil boom has pushed up the price of pretty much everything else, particularly housing.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Other countries don't have natural resources?:confused:

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Not on the same scale we do. That's why we export so much of it to the rest of the world.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

$1.06 here... Not complaining.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

$0.97 here lol,its great when the ltrs are higher than the $'s on the display at the pump :)

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Name a few examples, please.

A friendly word of warning. I analyse this stuff for a living.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Isn't the point that Canada doesn't have much else than natural resources? In the grand scheme of things.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

I think that's a cop out. Canada used to have a heck of a lot apart from natural resources: it used to have a fantastic reputation as one of the most well governed and sane countries in the world. It used to have a reputation, a well deserved one, for introducing and developing the quite progressive notion of soft power.

Now, it's an international laughing stock, serial recipient of the Fossil Award at conferences on climate change, a nation redefining the Dutch Disease as the Canadian Disease, a country of desperate income inequality, increasing poverty; a country with an utterly corrupt federal government and, for those who know it a bit better than most, a country which gets its waning sense of self-respect from harping on about whoever it was who scored that goal against Russia in 1972.

At least we still have maple syrup and cinnamon.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

*disparate
The rest is very good.
It was Henderson, off Esposito's rebound.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Yes and no.

In the past, Canada was seen as a nation of "hewers of wood and drawers of water". That was no longer true by the end of the 90s, with the rise of manufacturing and the service sector.

In recent years, things rather swung back the other way, with resources regaining importance.

Still more recently, the resources sector has taken a hammering. Energy prices are down, as are mineral commodity prices. The juniors (developers) can't raise any finance and a lot of them will go under. The majors are also suffering and some are pulling out, such as Cliffs Natural Resources announcing that it will close a sodding great big iron ore mine in the Labrador Trough.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Thank you. I meant desperate, I'm not sure you can have disparate inequality.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Indeed. As I mentioned in another thread, Newfoundland and Labrador is at serious risk of going (back) into the shitter. A Progressive Conservative Govt has spent 10 years spending more than they earned from non-renewable resources (all while failing to diversify the economy or investing in a wealth fund to take us through post oil/lean times ala Norway). To compound the madness, there is an $8 billion investment (& rising) in a hydro project in Labrador because allegedly it was the least cost scenario to meet future power needs. Least cost if oil is $135 a barrel, not so much at $68 and falling. Plus the avowed aim of selling cheap power to NS and the USA seems now to be a bit of a sketchy plan. Cheap(er) shale oil and gas in the US is reducing demand.

All in all the hydro project - Muskrat Falls - seems more around giving the finger t Quebec over the Upper Churchill - and creating lots of construction jobs for a few years. Since there is also a major oil project still under way (Hebron), some minor ones (White Rose extension) and a nickel refinery project just nearing completion (Vale Hydromet), there is of course not enough skilled workers to go around so wages are boosted & TFW's brought in to help. If the ill-thought out and dodgy hydro project was a good idea, then it might have been smarter to start it in a few years time to phase the work, but no, that wasn't politically expedient. Still, it's likely too late to stop now.

The current provincial govt will get annihilated in the next election which will be sometime next year. (They've lost 7 straight byelections in a row) and the Liberals will get in by dint of not stating any policies, not offending anyone & just being the people that you vote for as it's time to change. Their fiscal and social policies are largely the same as the progressive cons so probably little will change overall.

Plus ca change.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

If you have two things which are so unequal that they can't be reconciled isn't that disparity? As opposed to desperation, or being in dire need.

Re: 2014 Gas price moaning thread
 

Quite. We have seen a big change in our client base the last year or two (you know what I do). The speculative outfits are gone. It's all investment firms and big mining houses with deep pockets and time on their hands. They are sniffing out the bargains.