Alberta is screwed

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Dec 2018

RE: Alberta workers need help.  (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Alberta is screwed.  Jason Kenney, leader of the Alberta Conservative party revealed that Alberta was getting $12.50 for a barrel of oil when the world price was $52.50 – a $40.00 per barrel discount.  This isn’t sustainable.

From the moment that the Obama administration blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the government of Canada should have ordered the construction of a pipeline to the BC coast so that oil could be sold to China and Japan.   That wasn’t done.

Oil workers can’t live off unemployment insurance, and no amount of retraining is going to find them other jobs in Alberta.  They simply aren’t there.  In the nearish term, what is needed is a program to move the displaced workers to Ontario where the economy is more diverse and more dynamic.  The quality of the worker for Ontario industry will be as good as any in the world.

In the longer term, Alberta is going to have to refine its own oil, at a pace of a million barrels a day.  Finished fuels and lubes possess greater value value-added than crude oil.  There will still be the problem of shipment to markets east and south, and railroads will need to be expanded in capacity simultaneous with the construction of the refineries.  All this needs a co-ordination and concentration of effort between provincial and federal governments and within the federal government particularly.

There are few Liberal votes in Alberta.  Let’s see if that matters to Trudeau.

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