From the Smoke Pit

Our Fight for Independent National Policies is Our Fight for Peace

2010-12-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Part 2: An Independent Nation of Peace or Belligerent Prop of US Imperialism

Does Canada as a nation chart an independent international course of peace, progress and cooperation with other non-aligned and emerging states or remain entrenched in the monopoly capital interests of G7 states dominated by US imperialism supplying a growing share of our raw natural resources primarily to US value-added industries supporting US policies of war and hegemony?

The answer to this question placed within the context of contemporary world affairs situates Canada either as a nation of progress or a nation of reaction. It places the Canadian people either in solidarity with the overwhelming majority of the world’s people who work for wages and in their majority reject neo-colonial and imperialist policies or within the camp of a diminishing privileged sector of finance, energy and military capital - a belligerent class of wealth and privilege who perpetrate wars, dominance and occupation on the peoples of the world. The outcome of this question makes Canadian workers either the masters of their own destiny or complicit in imperialist wars of conquest and occupation. There can be no middle ground.

The fight for control over the commanding heights of the national economy determining the political and economic direction Canada pursues – either peace and progress, or war and reaction – is ultimately the struggle between labour and capital. It is the struggle for national policies which serve the interests of working people who must rely on wages or policies that serve a small and ever contracting parasitical class of wealth and privilege who rely on the unpaid labour time of workers in one form or another. There is no middle course.

There can be no reconciliation, no alignment, nor common purpose between the interests of labour and capital. There can be no basis for national policies that search for “equitable” distribution and sharing of the resources of the nation other than those which seek to fully subordinate the interests of finance and monopoly capital to those of the labouring people of Canada. This is the only basis upon which the Canadian people can fulfil the vast potential of the nation. It is the only path to be a leader in the contribution toward peace and progress in the world, and which provides all the peoples of Canada the opportunity to live a life free of economic hardship and worry. Canada has that potential and more.

Our Fight for Independent National Policies is Our Fight for Peace

2010-11-05T14:13:00.004-06:00

Part 1: Yes to Peace - No to NATO

“Economic planning operated in a capitalist country falls far short of the possibilities of planning under socialism when the working people have political power but, even with the limitations of private ownership, it can be used to produce results for the people until they can establish their political supremacy”

Tim Buck – Put Monopoly Under Control, Progress Publishers, Toronto, 1964, pp 25

For the Canadian people who in their majority are dependent on wages, an expanding economy to provide jobs, income and social and retirement security is vital. A growing economy means jobs and income – it means guarantees for the future of working families. Regional, national and foreign policies of governments are central to that aim. Government policies can benefit workers or exclude them from the productive capacity of the nation, providing benefits exclusively to the narrow profit motive.

The primary factors in determining the level of national income and which sectors of the Canadian economy contribute to and benefit from that goal is the national policy of the nation. Determining the direction, content and whose interests government policies serve, in Canada, is a fight for control over our nation, to place all national resources and its full productive capacity in the service of the Canadian people first.

The importance of this task confronts all working Canadians. The task is of first rate importance, one which will compel the nation to choose a course of independent action or to remain locked into the economic imperialist policies of US monopoly capital.

Recovery For Whom?

2010-03-09T11:10:00.004-07:00

From the Smoke Pit returns from a long absence – work gets in the way of writing.

The economy has not improved for Canadian workers despite all the claims of Harper and his speech writers at the Frazer Institute. It is getting worse for Canadian workers where over 1.5 million remain unemployed, wages, benefits and pensions all under attack and 10,000’s others exhausting their EI.

The Globe and Mail reported today in an article entitled “Job seekers faced with wary employers” that “economists are worried” that the “recovery” will be a jobless one. The article says that “It will take at least another year, and maybe two, to recover all of the 280,000 lost jobs in the recession”. The hatchet man Stockwell Day began his efforts to “trim the fat” in the public service by axing 285 GIC (Government in Council) positions.

Meanwhile bank profits are approaching pre-depression levels with the Scotia Bank reporting today that it will post 1st quarter profits of $988 million, up 17% from the year earlier. The Royal Bank reported a 35% increase in 1st quarter profits for 2010 to $1.5 billion. According to the Globe and Mail that is “bank's second-highest quarterly profit ever”. CIBC profits rose from $147 million a year ago to $652 million in the 1st quarter of 2010. BMO posted a $657 million profit, up $225 million from a year earlier. TD Bank profit doubled from a year earlier to $1.3 billion – a record performance.

Canadian families are facing household mortgage debt that is at an all-time high. February 16, 2010 the Globe and Mail reported in an article entitled “Household mortgage debt hits record”, that Vanier Institute of the Family said “debt is the highest level since the annual study began 11 years ago”. The report says that 2/3 of people 18-34 would be “squeezed” if their pay cheque is delayed by one week. The Bank of Canada reported that mortgages in arrears have risen to a 7 year high.

CIBC Economist Benjamin Tal says that, “Consumer bankruptcies have risen significantly over the past year, and they will continue to rise. Clearly, some people are in over their heads, and more will get into trouble when interest rates rise.” According to the January RBC Consumer outlook survey 58% of Canadians are worried about their debt loads. The chartered banks hold $336 billion of the debt up from $292 billion are year earlier.

Anyone who thinks can see that this spells disaster for Canadian workers. In the Federal Budget speech Flaherty boasted, “Our government took immediate action to ensure Canadian banks could keep lending…Because of prudent government regulation, none of our banks failed. None of them required a bailout from taxpayers, unlike their competitors in other countries.”

The Recession is Officially Over

2009-07-28T09:45:00.000-06:00

The Bank of Canada has announced that the recession is officially over. Flaherty is a glow with the “sound fundamentals” of the Canadian financial system. Markets are up. Housing starts and transactions are better than first predicted. Canada is poised to emerge ahead of all other major industrial nations. Or so goes the story.

Stats Canada announced today that unemployment is up significantly and the trend does not appear to be changing. The Daily said:

“In May, 778,700 people received regular Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, up 65,600, or 9.2%, from a month earlier, with Alberta and Ontario showing the fastest rates of increase. This rise followed an increase of 3.7% in April.”

Ontario and Alberta are the hardest hit provinces. Since October 2008 EI beneficiaries in Alberta has increased by over 200%! Ontario clocks in at just under 100% increase. Youth unemployment is staggering in the under 25 year demographic with +94% increase.

The official number “eligible” to receive EI benefits is 778,700. Those that are not receiving benefits but cannot find work are not included in the numbers, or those that have exhausted their benefits remain outside of “official” statistics.

Well it seems that the banks and finance speculators are doing alright. For the millions of workers without income the story is different. Hardship still dominates workers’ lives and will remain the central feature for workers as long as the capitalist system of exploitation remains.

Harper, Flaherty, Clements and MacKay and the rest of the rightwing think-tanks, academics and pundits are lying to Canadians. They need to be removed from power at the first opportunity. And those that say that the Liberals are just as bad will get no argument from this writer, however Harper is in power now, we will deal with Igantieff and his ilk when that is required.

Canadian Workers Labour 5 Years for Free!

2009-07-13T14:48:00.013-06:00

View the whole article (tables and graphs) at:
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=250

Striking CUPE public sector workers in Ontario are revealing the rapacious nature of capitalism better than any number of ‘exposures’, op-eds and news articles by the academic ‘left’ press. Not only are the courageous CUPE workers fighting for immediate gains against a backdrop of callous and brazen hostility, aimed a breaking the militant union, by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, a reactionary petty bourgeoisie and a venomous corporate media, they are also revealing the economic pillaging of workers wages, the squandering of Canadian productive capacity by corporate Canada and the true malicious nature of the Canadian ruling class towards workers.

Corporate media hacks are hyperventilating trying to out do each other for the most intimidating and argumentative news item. Attempts to ingratiate themselves with their corporate bosses are unwittingly bringing to light concealed and unnoticed information within the seedy backroom world of business council policy makers. Material and data that may otherwise remain obscured from the scrutiny of workers’ eyes is being publicized in a shrouded, but rather dramatic, fashion.

The nature of Canadian imperialism is being revealed not so much in the very evident and real attacks on the CUPE workers, and organized labour in general, by the hired media hack mercenaries of the Miller Toronto municipal council, it is also shown in the anxiety in the economic theoreticians of the Canadian ruling class. The Financial Post (FP) on June 23, 2009 published an article[1] that illustrated the alarm felt in the leading circles of corporate policy makers.

In an unwitting attempt to make a case and “justify” the need to break organized labour and to provide evidence why the Canadian economy is in shambles, the Financial Post in their apparent hyper anxious state does the opposite. The editors at the “Post” in reality expose the real cause of the crisis – capitalism and the irresolvable contradiction between social production and private accumulation. If Harper wasn’t so arrogant and vacuous he would have summoned the editors to the PMO and sternly reprimanded them for their careless “leak”.

Citing the growing strike activity by “public sector” workers, the Financial Post, tries to paint a picture that the “inflexibility” of unions fighting to hold onto “perks” and “fringe benefits” has questioned the “role” and “future” of unions in Canada.

Making a fallacious connection between Canadian labour productivity, workers’ “protected” rights, and wages “linked” to productivity, the FP said, “At a time when workers rights are protected by law and wage increases are generally linked to productivity, competitiveness and the success of the company, the economic downturn has kicked up a storm of dust around the role of unions and their future.”

Thinking workers would howl in jest at such a conclusion if it were not for the sinister undertones in the Financial Post’s remarks. Unions would smirk, roll eyes and shake their heads in collective unison if it were not for the real concessions forcefully extracted from collective bargaining agreements by a vindictive government-corporate coalition. Taken in light of the very real attacks and worsening social and economic conditions of Canadian workers as they, yet again, endure another depression, the FP’s malevolent and deceptive commentary can only be viewed as part of the general coordinated attack on Canadian workers’ living standards by monopoly capital.

The Financial Post attempts to make a case for breaking the “unwilling unions” and defending “flexible” non-union companies. Referring to economist Dale Orr of Global Insight[2], who bemoans that falling trade barriers, “open” and global markets make it more difficult for non-union companies to compete for labour. As the FP paraphrased, “But while a non-unionized company may have greater control over wages, Mr. Orr said this did not necessarily result in lower pay.”

So what is buried in all of this that the striking CUPE workers are exposing? The CUPE workers have agitated the Canadian ruling class to such an extent that the editors of the FP were compelled to counter with the same old tired union bashing trash.

The June 23 Financial Post article leads astute readers to the heart of the matter by quoting a December 2008 Centre of the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) report[3]. Concluding from the CSLS report that, “unions once created value for workers in a protected economy[4] by extracting a share of a company's excess profits for workers” the FP quoting Don Drummond, the senior vice president and chief economist at TD Securities as saying that this will mean that governments will begin to outsource more jobs in an effort to “cut expenses”. CUPE is on the frontline of that fight.

Quoting the CSLS report, the Financial Post asserts, “Unions must therefore accept market conditions or face plant closure. In the longer term, the unwillingness of unions to accept such conditions may potentially lead unionized firms to bankruptcy, while non-unionized competitors increase their market share.”

So then this is nothing more than the same old union tired bashing tirade that the Financial Post, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail regularly engage in. Well to a point. If one is to read and study the CSLS report in more detail a completely different picture emerges. It is a delineation that the Canadian ruling class is most alarmed by. But at the same time monopoly capital is fully engaged and most busily studying the effects and phenomenon described in the CSLS report. That question that is in actual fact posed in the FP anti-union attack is; how can monopoly capital extract more unpaid labour time form Canadian workers to prop up falling rates of profit?

The CSLS not only attempts to assist corporate Canada resolve that obstacle to their “profit dilemma”, they also reveal the extent to which the Canadian capitalist class has brutally exploited Canadian workers over the last 25 years and how they plan to continue to do so.

Piecing together statistics from the CSLS report, Stats Canada and other sources a picture begins to emerge of the depths of wage larceny and the far reaching detrimental consequences on the Canadian economy of decades of shameless labour exploitation by the Canadian ruling class.
The authors of the report in the Abstract openly state the real purpose of the study and reveal the magnitude and mechanisms on which Canadian and United States corporate profits are based. Profits are based solely on the unpaid labour time of Canadian workers. The report reveals the scandalous, immoral and criminal extent to which workers are exploited by the Canadian ruling class for its profits.

The CSLS report Abstract says, “The most direct mechanism by which labour productivity affects living standards is through real wages, that is, wages adjusted to reflect the cost of living. Between 1980 and 2005, the median real earnings of Canadians workers stagnated, while labour productivity rose 37 per cent. This report analyzes the reasons for this situation.” The authors’ suggestion that wages have “stagnated” is a gross understatement.

abour productivity[5] is a favourite topic of discussion amongst bourgeois academia. Hundreds of studies, reports and statistics all attempt to prove that Canadian workers are not productive and that they “lag” many other of the major industrial powers in this regard. Such talk is erroneous. If one is to believe this group of enlightened bourgeois labour economists all that is necessary to increase “lagging productivity” is to do away with unions.

What perplexes the Canadian ruling class and the CSLS authors’ the most is the central question posed and one that has baffled bourgeois economists for centuries; “why don’t workers work harder?” Taken from a Marxist or working class point of view the answer to the question is obvious – workers understand that there is nothing in it for them to work harder, except an early grave.

When viewed from a ruling class point of view the answer to the question becomes more frustrating and is met with a tirade of anti-worker theories that range from being “lazy” to being “uneducated” and “unmotivated”. All of these lead into the same old marsh of idealism and harsher “terms of trade”.

It is plain that the Center for the Study of Living Standards[6] falls into the later category. Founded in 1995 by former Canadian Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr. Ian Stewart, the main objectives of the “independent” CSLS are to:

contribute to a better understanding of trends in living standards and factors determining trends through research;
contribute to public debate on living standards by developing and advocating specific policies through expert consensus.

Such lofty goals and noble ideals can only be founded on the highest of principles and moral standing. Therefore to achieve these honourable aims the CSLS is funded by a who’s who of corporate think-tanks, foundations and government agencies which include the Conference Board of Canada, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Treasury Board to name just a few. Don Drummond TD economist also holds a prominent spot on the board.

The CSLS report intended for policy makers among the ruling elite also poses fundamental and basic questions for the working class. Firstly by defining what labour real wages are and what labour productivity is, in lexicon of bourgeois economic theory, the report poses the question;

“Economic theory holds that at the aggregate level the growth of real wages are determined by labour productivity growth, a relationship mediated by the labour’s share of output and labour’s terms of trade (the price of output relative to the price of goods that workers consume). Neither increases in the labour share nor labour’s terms of trade are likely to be a sustainable way of raising real wages because they fluctuate within fairly narrow bands. Only labour productivity growth can raise living standards in the long run. If short- and medium-term changes in the labour share or labour’s terms of trade mean that Canadians are not benefitting from higher labour productivity in the form of higher real wages, then why should they support policies to increase labour productivity growth?”

A good question indeed!

Secondly, and most vexing to the economists, the report outlines the true disparity and depths to which workers are being fleeced by the ruling class. Attempting to answer the question leads to only one solution for the bourgeoisie – work workers harder, longer! The report goes on to pose the following and most stunning exposition for all labour leaders, activists and progressive to study:

“The release of data from the 2006 Census has sparked debate over the causes and consequences of the finding that median earnings of individuals working full time on a full-year basis barely increased between 1980 and 2005. Adjusting for inflation, annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401 (in 2005 constant dollars), a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401. These facts do raise an interesting and important question that this report seeks to answer: what accounts for the divergence between the growth of labour productivity and the growth of real wages?”

Indeed! What does account for $53 (0.13%) in real wage increases over 25 years while productivity increased by 37%? Canadian workers have, on average, been swindled out of $8,946 per year! Taken another way, over $268,000 in their lifetime! So what is causing this? It is a very intriguing question that the report fails to answer. Even the authors admit in the report’s conclusions that, “In some sense, this report raises more questions than answers.” What!? A study supported and funded by some of the biggest “experts” in the field of Canadian economics and they can’t answer the question. Or maybe they don’t want to! [7]

The final statement in the report says, “If most Canadians are not seeing the benefits of labour productivity growth in the form of higher real wages, why should they support policies favouring productivity growth?”

Again the bourgeois economists cannot (or refuse to) answer why Canadian workers have not “shared” in the “wealth creation” and return full circle to the initial question posed in the report’s opening paragraph, answering absolutely nothing in the process except to resolve to return to the question at some later day and try again.

It is much the same as the saying that questions the probability of a million moneys pecking away at a million typewriters infinitely…eventually one of them writes a novel. Only we don’t have to wait until our bourgeois economic cousins descend from the trees and begin the slow arduous journey to standing erect and making fire. Marx has answered that question long ago. The real irony in the report is how well they prove Marx. It is remarkable what our economic simian cousins can unwittingly accomplish for the service of workers when given enough typewriters.

The key findings of the report are fully stated in the first paragraph of the executive summary and which any worker with grade school math can figure out after a life time of calculating and studying the miserable pittance of paycheques that are doled out after a week’s work. Workers can answer why! Why can’t the economists?

Well now let’s get to the meat of the matter. The authors’ key findings are summarized as follows.

From 1980 to 2005 annual earnings increased from $41,348 to $41,401, a mere $53 over 25 years. Over the same time period, labour productivity in Canada rose 37.4 per cent. That is all that is needed. With access to some basics statistics from the internet of Canadian GDP and population over the same period a more complete picture can be sketched out to the extent that Canada is being pillaged, ransacked and shipped out.

Our fiscal primates help out a little, however, when they do the productivity calculation for us and arrive at saying; “If median real earnings had grown at the same rate as labour productivity, the median Canadian full-time full-year worker would have earned $56,826 in 2005, considerably more than the actual $41,401.” Actually it is $15,425 more! In other words 1.37 X $41,401 equals $56,826. Projecting that number to 2009, using the same ratios, that number jumps again by another $2,468 per year.

Over the 25 year period that the study examined, real wages increased a total of $53. That averages out to be less then the cost for a 2 litre carton of milk per year at $2.12. If workers would have received the full benefit of the productivity gains over the same period it would have meant $619.12 per year, or a 29,000% increase! And that is in year 1 of the 25 year period.
Taking productivity into consideration, if we start in 1980 with productivity as 1, then productivity in 2005 would be 1.37. Average annual productivity increases would be just under 1.5% at 0.0148 per year over the 25 year period. Carrying that forward to 2009, productivity would equal 1.429.

The population of Canada grew 9,177,722 to 33,694,000[8] over 25 years from 1980. In 2009 the number of Canadians that worked for salaries and wages was over 18 million or just over 54% of the total population.[9] In 1980 the total Canadian labour force was 11,879,400 for workers 15 years and older. In 2009 the size of the labour force was over 18 million workers.[10] The size of the working class grew by 55% in 25 years! Over the same period of time the total Canadian population grew by 37%. Utilizing the total number of workers from the working class that are employed and applying that number for each year, on average, 51% of the Canadian population works for wages or salaries. (Table 1)

Applying the average lost wage of $619.12 per year per worker and adding it to each previous year’s last wage (and projecting it forward for 2006-2009 incl.) results in the total estimated wage that a worker should have received in 2005, which was calculated by the CSLS economists at just under $57,000. (Table 2)

Taking the product of each year’s lost wages and multiplying by the total population we arrive at the total value of unpaid wages for each year of the 25 year period. Summing the total unpaid wages by all wage earners in Canada from 1980 to 2009 we arrive at $3,973,026,443,300.00! Or in other words over $4 trillion! (Table 3)

Finally, taking the total Canadian GDP for each year we can calculate how much of each was spent by Canadian workers working for free. If the lost wages that should have gone to the workers were never paid, but the values created, the actual material goods, and services are realized in GDP as they were appropriated by the bosses and sold as profit.

Dividing the total lost wages for each year by the total GDP for that year we arrive at ratio of time working for wages that are not returned to the worker in wages. (Table 3) On average it results in .14 of each year is spent labouring free for the bosses. The total number of hours that a worker has worked for free over the 25 year period is 8,778 hours. Over 25 years it amounts to 4.2 years. But we don’t really believe our economist experts are really telling the full truth[11] so let’s just say - 5 years!!!

So the question that the CSLS economists pose; “what accounts for the divergence between real wages and productivity?” can now be answered – capitalism. It is due to the massive theft of workers’ wages - 5 years of unpaid labour time. Now that we know the answer our economist friends can get onto something more challenging - like how do Canadians get those unpaid wages back?

Notes
[1] Alia McMullen, “Unions face uncertain future in global economy”, Financial Post, June 23, 2009
[2] http://www.globalinsight.com/AnalystBio/AnalystBioDetail90.htm
[3] Sharpe, Arsenault, Peter, “The Relationship between Labour Productivity and Real Wage Growth in Canada and OECD Countries”, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Research Report No. 2008-8, December, http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2008-8.pdf
[4] “Protected economy” is another way of saying sovereign. Therefore if unions “once” created value for workers in a sovereign economy and are “unable” to do so now in a “competitive and deregulated world” the need for Canadian sovereignty becomes more urgent for Canadian workers. Or looking at it from the other way, selling-out resources and Canadian sovereignty to US and foreign monopoly capital or the highest bidder means greater profits for US finance speculators and investors and lower wages for Canadian workers.
[5] Labour productivity in the bourgeois economist lexicon really means higher rates of profits. Profits can only be realized through the unpaid labour time of workers. There is no other way to generate profits.
[6] http://www.csls.ca/about.asp
[7] If it is the former then they are not real “experts” and all the funding by big business is just wasted time and “taxpayers’ money”. If it is the later then they are barefaced liars and petty crooks (well maybe not as petty as we shall see). Either way in the final analysis they only serve the interests of monopoly capital and not workers. These are the lofty goals to which they aspire.
[8] Statistics Canada, Table 051-0001 - Estimates of population, by age group and sex for July 1, Canada, provinces and territories, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM (database), http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm, (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[9] Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, Relseased July 10, 2009, CANSIM table 282-0087, Labour force characteristics by age and sex – June, 2009, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/lfs-epa-eng.pdf
[10] Statistics Canada. Table 282-0002 - Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by sex and detailed age group, annual (persons unless otherwise noted) (table), CANSIM, http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&CNSM-Fi=CII/CII_1-eng.htm (Accessed July 11, 2009)
[11] Depending on which data set is used the numbers vary widely from 6 years down to 4.2 years. Therefore we will let the bourgeois economist prove us wrong!

The Ideological Struggle is a Fight for a Working Class World View

2009-07-03T15:11:00.001-06:00

A war is being waged. Canadian workers are being punished in record numbers by monopoly capital for its callous policies of profit first, people second. As the spin-doctors for the capitalist press announce almost daily that the ‘recovery is just around the corner’ or the ‘end is in sight’ the reality for millions of Canadian workers and their families can be farther from the truth. Outrage is boiling over in Ontario where the brave CUPE municipal workers in Windsor and Toronto, resisting the combined efforts of business and government forces to break the union, are fighting to protect decades of hard won working class gains clearly demonstrate.

The class divisions within Canada are more evident then ever. While the majority of Canadians are dependent on wages to provide security for their families a shrinking section of the parasitical classes, holding the commanding heights of economic, political and ideological power, attempt to foment ruptures and turmoil within working class unity.

The thin veil of ‘equality’ is being violently stripped off the working class by the economic realities of the capitalist crisis to expose the real depths of class divides and the ideological and economic basis of these schisms. Newspaper editorial blogs deliberately sow confusion within unorganized and unemployed ‘private sector’ workers. News website reader comment sections are bursting with class confusion, bourgeois parroting and anti-worker hate mongering unwittingly among this section of the working class and maliciously by the ideological agents of business dogma that troll anonymously posting outlandish lies and assertions.

Business doctrine is spread liberally by monopoly capital’s bought-and-paid-for ideological think-tanks, academic stooges and hired management consultants, targeting the least class conscious sections of workers. The main objective of these attacks is to win public sentiment for the profit first policies of monopoly capital, divide organized labour into isolated factions and break unions into compliant and voluntary tools of monopoly capital policy.

Objectively, the only barrier between the open dictatorial rule of monopoly capital is organized labour. This is what the CUPE resistance is primarily about. What started as an ‘economic’ struggle is quickly exploding into a broader political struggle. The deepening antagonisms within the growing capitalist crisis are also revealing more clearly two world views – that of peace and progress which is upheld by labour, and that of reaction and violence which are expressed in the anti-union ideology of imperialism led by the minority Harper conservative government.

The municipal workers strike has also exposed the greatest weakness within organized labour – ideology. While the valiant efforts of 24,000 CUPE workers that walk picket lines is a testament to their outrage and courage, the struggle is hand cuffed because they are not armed with partisan working class theory – Marxism. The fight to infuse Marxist ideology into the labour movement is urgent. The forces of peace and socialism are called upon to make the ideological struggle the struggle of primary importance.

Dimanno, Hack Journalism: Anti-Canadian to the Core

2009-07-02T19:18:00.004-06:00

Toronto Star crack columnist Rosie Dimanno, in the finest tradition of Rush Limbaugh, scratches at the bowels of trash journalism like so many of her contemporary B circuit tabloid critics. With the zeal of an apparent narcotic induced delusional narcissism, which could only have been brought on by years of self aggrandizing, cheap manicures and ‘tween rainbow hairdos, but more suited to the titillation and gossip of a suburban hair salon, Dimanno flatters herself with self righteous bombastic slurs on the workers of Toronto and Hamilton.

The petty and hysterical display of self indulgent opinion, which in the custom of a sagging and frustrated hedonistic mistress of a used car salesman seeking the favour of men half her age, Ms. Dimanno attempts to elevate herself from journalistic hatcheck girl and dogma servant of the pampered classes turning op-ed tricks for shekels, to a hostess at the back doors of their ideological brothels, rewarded for her journalistic anti-worker shock-jock pap. Ms. Dimanno’s journalism, if you could call it that, is a proper wart on the nation.

Dimanno seeks favour from the enmeshed Toronto cocktail circuit crowd of the Levitt-Hudak-Miller “power” elites. Like opening a can of tuna and pouring the juice down the drain Ms. Dimanno’s particular brand of journalistic rubbish stinks. From her aching desire to scratch the Zionist itch burning deep in her breach, between pen and paper, to her pandering to the anti-worker Harper right-wing "taxpayers' money" brain trust, Dimanno is the poster child for the brown shirt lament.

Ms. Dimanno’s journalism is amazingly average and nothing more than that which is produced by any other upper-middle class spoiled brat high school dropout that never worked a day in her life and had daddy pay for her art school college diploma. Or maybe her journalism is just plain bad.

What ever the reason, the editors of the Toronto Star should cut her salary and send her searching for defecating dog stories - it will do the nation good. We can always hope.

Halt the Treasonous Western Premiers! For an All Canadian Power Grid Now!

2009-06-23T08:13:00.001-06:00

The almost total and complete binding integration of Canadian power with United States industry is being sinisterly planned and brazenly executed fully in the open and with the active and complete participation of the Western Canadian Premiers of Campbell, Stelmach, Wall and Doer and with the full knowledge and support of the federal Harper regime. It is a treasonous act and must be exposed and condemned by all Canadian patriots. It must be halted!

Plans are well underway to create a massive western power grid called the Western Interconnection[1] that stretches from the northern regions of Alberta and BC to the deep south of the western US and into Mexico. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are also drawing up plans to supply power into the grid from Manitoba’s massive hydro potential and Saskatchewan’s uranium supplies through the construction of nuclear power generation facilities.

The joint initiative between the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) plans to bring Canadian power supplies under the jurisdiction of Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) by dividing the Western Interconnection into Western Renewable Energy Zones (WREZ). The plans are outlined in detail in the Western Renewable Energy Zones – Phase 1 Report.[2]

The report outlines four objectives that the joint initiative is to achieve and which was the focus of three days of meetings at the Western Governors’ Association 2009 Annual Meeting, Park City, Utah on June 14 - 16, 2009. The main plenary session was entitled “Tapping the West’s Renewable Energy Potential”. Also on the agenda at the meeting was the topic “Managing Water in a Changing World”. The four Western Canadian Premiers attended the event. Manitoba Premier Doer said, "The reality is we're all producers of energy, we're all sellers of energy into western United States, and into the mid-western United States,"[3]

The 2006 Western Governors' Association Policy Resolution 06-10, “Clean and Diversified Energy for the West” states that:

“This resolution included a series of recommendations to meet the objectives of adding 30,000 megawatts of clean energy to the West by 2015, increasing energy efficiency by 20% by 2020, and providing 25 years of secure, reliable transmission.”

WGA Policy Resolution 09-1 was the outcome[4]. Among other recommendations it lays the basis for long-term uninterrupted supply of clean energy to the Western United States. It also recommended that the Western Renewable Energy Zones – Phase 1 Report was to be completed. Resolution 09-1 states that the Western United States governors “believe” that the United States must:

“Ensure that energy costs are affordable for consumers and support a sustainable, growing economy (in the US no mention of Canada - ed.) and increase the proportion of our energy supplies that come from domestic resources and friendly trading partners (Canada, who else has the energy and you can’t transmit power across the ocean – ed.)”

In the sweeping Policy Resolution, 09-1 went on to say that US energy development must be through a comprehensive national framework with an “aggressive timeframe” with an energy development and supply infrastructure designed to avoid interruptions. The resolution addressed nuclear power as the fundamental “base load” supply and called on the US federal government to act aggressively to meet the targets in the resolution. The Canadian Western Premiers all have detailed knowledge of the scope and breadth of the document and what the implications are for Canada. To deny this would be to lie.

Of the total identified 8452 MW of hydro power capacity potential in the WREZ’s Alberta and BC accounted for 7892 MW or 93% of the total. BC alone accounts for 72% of all “Western” hydro resources. Total wind power capacity in Western Interconnection was estimated to be 95,219 MW. Alberta and BC accounted for 18,372 MW or 19.2% of the total. Of the total Western Interconnection identified capacity (solar, geothermal, hydro and wind) of 198,789 MW Canada accounted for 14% of the total. It must be noted that the vast majority of power is identified as coming from solar in California but the most reliable and most easily accessible is Canadian hydro. And of the total hydro potential, Canada accounts for the majority. BC “shares” a zone with Washington State increasing its share even further.

The report was completed with the help of Canadian Geothermal Energy Association. The report noted that, “British Columbia voluntarily provided a hub on the British Columbia-Washington border to the WREZ process. This represents a 16,000 gigawatt-hour per year shaped energy product that British Columbia could provide to load serving entities (LSEs) at the border.”

What is clear is that there is widespread support and collusion from Canadian authorities for the supply of cheap Canadian power to the US Governors and willingness from those same authorities and elected officials to supply US energy needs first.

The first objective of the initiative is to identify the WREZ throughout the Western Interconnection that feature the” potential for large scale development of renewable resources”. The report identifies and characterizes “resource-rich” areas “screening out” those areas “where development is prohibited or severely constrained by geography, regulation or statues”. The report went on to say that the initiative will further refine WREZ’s and continue to work towards “implementing additional screens that balance the benefits of renewable energy development with the need to protect wildlife and crucial habitat.”

Secondly the report is the culmination of evaluation for the “various transmission strategies”. Relative economic cost models from source to “load centres” have been developed which will be used calculate power delivery potential across each WREZ. Detailed maps have been developed that show hydro, wind, geothermal and solar potential.

Black and Veatch (B&V) the giant international engineering firm was contracted to complete the study and map the findings. Interestingly enough B&V CEO Len C. Rodman will be a keynote speaker at the Sustainable Water Solutions for Cities forum at the Water Leaders Summit, part of the second annual Singapore International Water Week, which is to be held on 22-26 June 2009.[5]

Thirdly the report “recognizes” that regional development should be completed in “concert” with more “localized” efforts. This suggestion that the WGA and the DOE will work towards municipal efforts at energy development is particularly troubling. With Canada-US agreements on “trade” through NAFTA, SPP and now interconnected with the Western Canadian province’s TILMA the picture is coming more into focus.

Finally the report stated that, “[the initiative] will undertake a range of efforts to lay the foundation for promoting the efficient regional development, procurement and delivery of energy from renewable resource areas to multiple population centers throughout the Western Interconnection”. This is the long-term plan which envisages a massive power grid connecting Canada, the US and Mexico.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach lauding the plans said, “They know that we have an excellent opportunity as neighbours on the North American continent to co-operate,”
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and Vice Chair of the WGA commenting on Stelmach’s remarks said that the oil sands are a critical component of US energy security. Echoing Governor Schweitzer’s remarks Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter agreed, saying "it's both western parts of Canada and the United States that can play a role in energy independence." Who’s energy independence?

"The most important energy corridor on the planet is no longer the Persian Gulf. It runs from the oilsands, Fort Mc-Murray to Port Arthur, Texas," Schweitzer said. "A large part of energy independence is going to be dependent upon developing the oilsands."

What is plainly evident from all this chatter is, that large scale plans are being rapidly implemented for the exploitation of Canadian energy resources to bolster a flagging and depleted US energy industry all in an attempt to bring the US out of depression on the backs of Canadian workers. This is all being done without the least consideration for Canadian needs or national development and all with the full knowledge and active participation of our treasonous Western Premiers (or maybe it should be said, the Western Canadian Governors).

What is needed in response to these unpatriotic acts is a national energy and labour policy that develops Canadian industry from east to west. Western Canadian labour federations have a particular important role to play in mobilizing opposition to this blatant and brazen sell-out of Canadian sovereignty. The AFL has made a good start with its research papers and policy statements on Alberta oilsands development but they are inadequate to meet the frenzied theft of Canadian resources by big US energy, finance and engineering monopolies in alliance with the Western Premiers and the Harper regime.

Organized labour is the only impediment that can halt this sell-out. All patriotic forces are called upon to take up this question and elevate it to the national level in conjunction with the Canadian Labour Congress, the CAW and the CEP and placed as the centre piece of a new Canadian labour and national development program - lest Canada is permanently relegated to little more than a country of pick axes, shovels and saws.

Notes
[1] The Western Interconnection is the name of the electricity grid that includes the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; the part of Texas near El Paso; the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia; and a small portion of northern Mexico in Baja California. It is overseen by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC).
[2] Western Governor’s Association and the US Dept. of Energy, “Western Renewable Energy Zones - Phase 1 Report”, June 2009, http://www.westgov.org/wga/publicat/WREZ09.pdf
[3] Jason Fekete, “Western premiers tout energy corridor at US conference”, Calgary Herald, June 15, 2009
[4] WGA, “Policy Resolution 09-1, Energy Policy, Renewable Energy and Transmission for the West”, http://www.westgov.org/wga/policy/09/index.htm
[5] Black & Veatch, “Black and Veatch reveals forum keynote speakers”, http://www.processingtalk.com/news/bla/bla161.html

Alberta Energy Sector Workers Held Hostage by Anti-Worker Governments and International Finance Speculators

2009-06-22T14:19:00.002-06:00

“Alberta oil sands show signs of life” declared the Globe and Mail headline.[1] The article announced that “many” in the province see indications that the economy may be improving in the Alberta energy sector. Citing the announcement by Imperial Oil that it will precede with the $8 billion Kearl Lake mine and that the “run-up” in oil prices have contributed to the optimism the authors, quoting Grande Prairie Mayor Dwight Logan who said, “I'm hesitant to say this, but I feel like we've almost dodged a bullet,” were quick to point out that the reality may be quite different.

The effects of the global capitalist depression on Alberta energy sector workers are particularly acute and have been covered up and relegated to the back pages of the corporate media. In its place is substituted petty bourgeois gossip on mergers and acquisitions, speculation on stock market prices fluctuations and academic theories of “long-term” development and environmental calamity which all amount to nothing more then finance-academia titillation for the parasitically idle classes.

Creating a phoney atmosphere of stability within a real and deepening crisis of employment, access to EI and pensions and resource sell-out the mouthpieces of big oil attempt to ingratiate themselves with the power circles of Calgary energy finance. In an effort to absolve the Harper and Stelmach governments in alliance with the oil monopolies of any responsibility for the economic crisis, betrayal of a national energy policy and deflect criticism from a Made-In-Canada energy crisis the media with support from academia at the University of Calgary hide the true affects for Alberta workers.

Gil McGowan president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) said:

“Kearl Lake will create a couple of thousand short- to medium-term construction jobs - and in the current economic climate, that's a welcome thing."

“But over the longer term, this project is deeply troubling because it's focused exclusively on the extraction and export of raw bitumen. The real money - and the real jobs - in this business are in upgrading and refining. Unfortunately Kearl will be sending all of those benefits down the pipeline to Exxon refineries in the US Midwest and Gulf Coast.”[2]

With unemployment in Alberta now reaching 123,000 workers and EI benefits only covering a third of those unemployed, for the majority of out-of-work Albertans the situation is reaching crisis levels. Access to EI benefits are delayed for 10 weeks in Alberta throwing over 34,000 onto the welfare roll.[3] Thousands are losing their homes and rental suites. Workers’ savings are being depleted at a furious pace and debt loads incurred by boom inflation cycle are eating into retirement savings.

The AFL has called on the Western Premiers to convene a national pension summit to demand that the Harper minority Conservative government ensure that all Canadians have full access to pensions and EI benefits. The AFL President said:

"As a result of the global recession and the collapse in equity markets, it has become painfully obvious that our existing patchwork system is not up to the task of providing adequate retirement income for most Canadians."

"Workers in western Canada are being unfairly discriminated against by arbitrary rules that make it much harder for them to qualify for the EI benefits they've paid for. But it's not clear that the new pact between the federal Conservatives and Liberals will do anything to address this fundamental inequity,"

“Energy companies are also storing fuel on tankers, with some 62 million barrels estimated at sea, according to shipbrokers and traders.”[4] The U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration estimated in its May 12, 2009 Short-Term Energy Outlook report that globally, “there are also an additional 130 million barrels of crude oil in floating storage.”[5] Total global daily consumption is about 82 million barrels per day.

So what does this have to do with Alberta unemployment, access to EI and pensions?

This massive inventory of oil and LNG is speculatively traded on spot markets like a “hot potato” passing from one hand to the next but never leaving the tanker. This speculation is artificially pushing prices higher. By maintaining prices at artificially high levels the costs are passed onto Canadian workers who pay world market prices. In other words with all the energy, oil and natural gas that Canada has the costs to prop up global oil speculators and stabilize US oil production capacities are being subsidized by Canadian workers.

A Made-In-Canada domestic price is needed. Halt the shipment of raw bitumen to US upgraders and refineries. Create a national energy policy that forms the basis for industrial expansion in Canada and trade with the world. This will only occur when energy is placed into the hands of workers and the energy industry in nationalized. The necessity to remove the Harper regime at the first opportunity is urgent and can only be achieved on the basis of labour unity acting in its own interests first around a national program of industrial expansion based on the expansion energy.

Notes:
[1] Katherine O'Neill, Dawn Walton, “Alberta oil sands show signs of life”, Globe and Mail, June 22, 2009
[2] Gil McGowan, Statement on Kearl, May 26, 2009, http://www.afl.org/news/default.cfm?newsId=589
[3] Renata D'Aliesio, “As unemployment surges, Albertans waiting 10 weeks for EI”, Canwest News Service, June 21, 2009
[4] Edward McAllister, “Oil slips on dollar, U.S. industrial data, Reuters”, June 16, 2009
[5] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Short-Term energy Outlook, May 12, 2009, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/may09.pdf

Flaherty Has a Plan!

2009-06-16T13:26:00.002-06:00

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced today that “we have a plan”! This is such a relief to all Canadian workers. We can now all rest well at night knowing that the Finance Minister is on the case.

Responding to pressures to explain how the minority Conservatives will reduce the ballooning federal deficit[1] they created by transferring billions of dollars of speculative debt from the balance sheets of the big banks onto the backs of Canadian workers following the G20 summit Flaherty said, “Temporary spending will end. We'll use the surplus first of all to pay off the deficits we incur now.”[2] Where the “surplus” is come from Flaherty doesn’t say.

Today it was also announced by Stats Canada that productivity by Canadian workers grew 0.3% over the first three months of the year. This was said to be “largest gain Canadian businesses have posted in two years”.[3] The Globe and Mail report showed that the decline in overall output fell 1.9% from the previous quarter while the number of hours worked by Canadians was reduced by 2.2%, hence the 0.3% gain in “productivity”.

The report also showed that “labour costs” were lower due to the falling rate of wage increases which fell from 1.5% to 1.2%. Inventories were high even as workers were slashed from payrolls. The report concluded that the trend is far from over and that much more “harsh corrections” are required. Beata Caranci, director of economic forecasting at Toronto-Dominion Bank was quoted in the G&M article as saying, “They're (employers) going to have to become far more aggressive”.

It was noted that the inventories are going to have to be reduced by $70 billion over the next year. In a foot note it was pointed out that a “scale-back” in oil sands activity was also identified as “boosting” efficiency.

So what is Flaherty’s “plan”? Cut wages, throw more workers out of work and work the remained longer. Oh and make sure that “temporary programs” for worker relief are axed as quickly as possible. This is good plan if you are a banker because the gains made in all this increased productivity will be paid back to you with interest for the loans Canadians made to the banks so that the banks could loan the money back to the federal government for Flaherty’s “temporary programs”. This is one big shell game on the backs of workers.

[1] Globe and Mail, “Deficit swells from $34-billion to $50-billion – in 4 months”, May 27, 2009
[2] Globe and Mail, “We have a plan to return to surplus: Flaherty”, June 16, 2009
[3] Globe and Mail, “Productivity rises through deep job cuts”, June 16, 2009

Workers Require Greater Understanding

2009-06-15T13:16:00.002-06:00

Many changes have occurred since the last posting of FSP. The absence of commentary on this blog has been precipitated by the collapse in the Canadian economy and the curtailment of oil sands projects in Alberta. This has forced thousands of oil sands workers from all over the country to find alternate sources of income as indirect and direct labour is cut, idled or shifted into other areas.

Workers have been laid off, transferred into other jurisdictions or onto EI or “back on the books”. Thousands have gone back home to eastern Canada or in search of employment in other provinces. Temporary foreign workers have been sent back to their country of origin. Engineering houses have reduced staff, service and consultant contractors have had contracts terminated. Families are under severe economic pressures as the expansion of oil sands extraction and production has shifted into a phase of “wait and see”, consolidation and combine.

This is the situation that this commentator has had to confront which has been the cause of the absence of any commentary on this blog. The necessity for ongoing discussion, commentary and analysis from the perspective of energy sector workers is needed to an even greater degree than has been achieved to date. Rapidly changing conditions within in the energy sector as reflected in state-monopoly relations, the Canadian economy and Canada-US relations dictate that a more consistent and critical approach is applied to this task and with greater urgency.

Workers require greater understanding of the political and economic relations going on within the nation from a Marxist analysis. It is not good enough to comment on the situation in the energy sector without vetting it through close working class scrutiny based on Marxism.

This is to say, how do the rapid changes and the complex relations emerging within inter-monopoly and inter imperialist affairs affect the Canadian working class? What are the critical developments within the industry that affect workers? How can we as workers understand these changes better to move towards regaining control of our nation and nationalizing key section s of industry for the benefit of all Canadian people not just the finance, oil and military speculators, investors and parasites?

Analyzing the relationships between the state and the oil monopolies is of particular necessity. Canada-United States economic and political relations over attempts to further bind Canadian production, extraction and exploration within the “North American” reality requires deeper study. The growing antagonistic relation within competing energy interests are of particular concern as competition for control of markets requires to some degree a “decoupling” of current development strategies to change in anticipation of these new markets.

Further, federal-provincial relations requires greater understand by workers to prepare us for guiding our actions and relations within our own class, to defend our own class interests and to guide our actions and attitudes towards our organized labour bodies to assert a greater and more decisive influence on the nation’s affairs.

All these questions and more require ongoing study, discussion and analysis. To date this blog has not achieved these requisites. It has not approached the level that the sharpening class antagonisms are demanding of the left for ideological and theoretical understanding. Moving forward it is critical that this analysis is guided by partisan approach to the working class.

Developing the Home Market - Part I: Alberta’s Role in Canadian Energy Supply

2008-12-21T12:03:00.006-07:00

As was discussed in the December 20 2008 ‘Developing the Home Market’ post some comment on the Alberta provincial government ‘Energy Strategy’ is required. I will begin with some stats illustrating the role that Alberta plays in Canadian GDP…

On December 11 2008 the Alberta Provincial Government released a report entitled, “Launching Alberta’s Energy Future – Provincial Energy Strategy”.[1] The news release announcing the strategy said that, “a long-term action plan for Alberta to achieve clean energy production, wise energy use and sustained economic prosperity”.[2] Provincial Energy Minster Mel Knight claimed the energy strategy would propel Alberta to, “global energy leader that is recognized as world-class energy supplier, energy technology champion, and a responsible energy consumer and environmental citizen”.[3]

Alberta has expanded oil production by 26.6% since 2001 adding 367,000 bbls/day of total production. During this period, conventional light oil and heavy crude declined by about 27%, shedding 196,000 bbls/day of total production. Oil sands production increased dramatically by 82.4% to 1.2 million bbls/day. In 2007 Saskatchewan produced 426,000 bbls/day of conventional oil or about 42% of western Canadian conventional production. Saskatchewan produces almost 50% more conventional heavy oils than Alberta. Alberta produces approximately 52% of the total conventional western Canadian supply of 1.017 million bbls/day. Combined Alberta and Saskatchewan account for 78% of Canada’s 2.753 million bbls/day 2007 production levels. Over this period total Canadian oil production increased by 24% adding 533,000 bbls/day of production. What is surprising about these figures is that Eastern Canada accounted for 41% of the increased capacity adding 220 bbls/day of production.[4]

According to the Alberta Provincial Energy Strategy document the energy sector is the single largest contributor to the provincial GDP and accounts for two-thirds of provincial exports. Examining industry Canada data over the last 10 year period from 1998 to 2007 and comparing exports to Alberta’s ten largest trading nations and reviewing the top 25 export products it can be seen that energy exports[5] have jumped from $14.6 billion to $52.9 billion – a 261% increase. In 2007 the Industry Canada data showed that made up 67.6% of total exports.

Total exports from Alberta increased 172% to $78.3 billion from $28.7 billion. Exports for all other products over the same 10 year period grew from $14 billion to $25.3 billion or an 80% increase. In realative terms however non-energy exports declined as a total percentage of all exports. In 1998 all other products made up just fewer than 50% of Alberta exports. In the year 2007 this percentage had dropped to 32.4%.

Over the same period the share of energy (oil and natural gas, excluding electricity) as a total of all Canadian exports has risen from 6% in 1998 to 20% in 2007. The volume has increased to almost $83 billion. Auto manufacturing has declined as a total percentage of total Canadian exports from 19.3% to just 0ver 13% in 2007. The total value of auto exports in dollars in 2007 was $55.5 billion.

Energy is now the single largest share of Canadian exports. It eclipsed auto in 2005. The graphs below show the changes in Alberta exports (Graph 1) and the increase in energy as a total of Canadian exports (Graph 2).

Graph 1

Graph 2

[1] Government of Alberta, “Alberta’s Provincial Energy Strategy 2008”, December 11, 2008, http://www.energy.alberta.ca/Org/pdfs/AB_ProvincialEnergyStrategy.pdf
[2] Government of Alberta News Release, “Provincial Energy Strategy charts course for sustainable prosperity”, December 11, 2008, http://alberta.ca/ACN/200812/24926232C684C-E7DE-976F-01D37383CE0F8F0C.html
[3] Government of Alberta News Release, “Provincial Energy Strategy charts course for sustainable prosperity”, December 11, 2008, http://alberta.ca/ACN/200812/24926232C684C-E7DE-976F-01D37383CE0F8F0C.html
[4] Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, “Crude Oil Forecast, Markets & Pipeline Expansions”, June 2008, http://www.capp.ca/raw.asp?x=1&dt=NTV&e=PDF&dn=138295
[5] Industry Canada product codes: 270900 - CRUDE PETROLEUM OILS AND OILS OBTAINED FROM BITUMINOUS MINERALS, 271121 - NATURAL GAS IN GASEOUS STATE

Developing the Home Market - Part I: Introduction

2008-12-20T17:49:00.004-07:00

The need to discuss energy from the stand point of a worker is critical to understanding the role that energy plays within the overall development of Canada. Canada cannot develop without energy. It is also essential that unity is developed within the Canadian labour movement. The hardships that are affecting manufacturing workers are cause for concern within the energy sector. To expect that Canada can move forward without energy is naïve. To expect that Canada can develop without an integrated and highly developed manufacturing sector is just as absurd. The division of Canadian workers from coast to coast to coast creates illusions within labour.

Canadian economic development cannot occur for the benefit of all Canadian workers until the natural resources are placed in the hands of the people. Canada can never move forward when Canadian capital is allowed to sacrifice the national interests in favour of quick profits in the US market or other global markets.

What is in the best interests of Canadian workers is in the best interests of the nation as a whole. The shift from capitalist domination over the economy is a struggle that will of necessity have to be played out in sharper forms of struggle. Workers will have to defend their interests first and dispense with phoney business theories that have nothing to do with the welfare of Canadian workers and more to do with their profits.

As part of that contribution I will be presenting a discussion on energy as the material basis to move Canada forward. I will discuss the development of the Canadian market as the fundamental starting point to regain control of the nation and struggle to place it in the hands of the people.

The need to nationalize basic industry and resource extraction is a critical element in moving the nation from capitalist forms of economic relations where people’s needs are subordinated to profit and to place it on a firm footing of socialist modes of production.

This discussion is an on going discussion that will look at government and regulatory statistics and develop a comprehensive national development program around a home market. The basis of the home market is to shift production from profit motives and to socialize labour to an even greater extent then capitalism can accomplish.

The fundamental starting point is control of Canadian resources, development of an expanding goods producing economy based on large scale industry (eco-socialists beware) and the need to shift trade from US markets into developing nations that are in desperate need of Canadian technology and resources. As well it will discuss increases in social wages as the only way to provide for rapidly increasing standards of living.

The title of this series will be called – “Developing the Home Market”. It will be interwoven with “Let ‘em Eat Root Vegetables” and will discuss labour as the sole source of national wealth. We will begin the discussion with a review of Stelmach’s Provincial Energy Strategy document that was issued December 11 2008.

Let ‘em Eat Root Vegetables – Part I: Preface

2008-12-20T10:07:00.005-07:00

As was discussed in the Friday December 19 2008 ‘From the Smoke Pit’ post there is a need to address the environmental left and the affects they are having on working class unity. In Alberta the economic crisis has almost totally silenced these forces of the so called ’No New Approvals’ movement. It has exposed their policies as untenable in the face of job loss and economic hardship for energy sector workers.

In an expanding economy these opportunist elements of the petty bourgeoisie gain a foothold within organized labour infecting it with middleclass theories. Within an economic crisis these elements become more exposed having to adapt to growing working class mobilizations. We begin our discussion…

Preface

The following began as part of an ongoing polemic between the editor of the Yahoo Group, Revolutionary Politics Progressive Bulletin Board (RevPol) and Focus On Socialism (FOS) contributor and assistant editor William O’Casey. FOS is the political journal of Canadians for Peace and Socialism under the editorship of CPS Chair Don Currie.

However, to fully respond the scope of the discussion needed to be broadened and deal with the more general question of the leading role of working class within the context of global warming. This question leads in turn to the underlying basis of the divide – idealism versus materialism.

RevPol/FOS Polemic Background

The polemic sharpened following the publication of FOS “The ‘Left’ Bamboozled Again!” editorial, in FOS Election Bulletin #3. RevPol took exception to what he deemed FOS’s “false antagonisms” and retreating from the “status quo”. FOS disagrees with a call to “No New Approvals”[1] and shutting down oil sands development, which is very much in fashion within the environmental left.

The full content of the RevPol’s comments can be found on the RevPol bulletin board entitled “Focus on Socialism - Election Bulletin #3 - September 15, 2008” (Message # 2463) or in the Appendix at the end of this document.

When this article was first cast it was under the flawed assumption by the author that the positions put forward by RevPol where based in a divergence in the approach to the question, and that the underlying theories were due, in part, to honest and misguided attitudes towards workers. It was further believed, within that context, that an open and frank exchange of views would lead to greater unity and discourse, within the course of the discussion, to find correct strategies and tactics in the fight for energy sector workers jobs in the face of calls to shutdown the oils sands in Alberta.

However since the last posting to the RevPol bulletin board entitled “An Exchange on Environmentalism” (Message # 2604) and a subsequent posting (Message #2605) by the editor of a RevPol supporter, Mike Sawyer, which expressed a deep seated hostility and anger towards workers more befitting of a southern Gentleman than a rational leftist, all assumptions of an “honest” exchange were destroyed. It illustrated in very plain language the positions held by many environmentalists towards workers. This could not go unchallenged.

The RevPol Editor also asserted that he is part of “The Eco-Socialist Movement” and self described “Deep Red” upon doing some initial research it was evident that the basis of these hostilities is rooted in an historical battle between ideologies of the working classes and those of the ruling classes and their petty bourgeois beneficiaries. In this light an urgent recasting was called for. The basis of the RevPol Editor’s assertions and remarks and the philosophy of the movement are contained within Ecosocialist Network 2nd Ecosocialist Manifesto.

These theories advocated by the ecosocialist trend have demanded a more thorough analysis of this new tendency, and the dangerous strains of “Deep Ecology”. These trends are emerging within “left” and which symptoms of this troubling variant are gaining a foothold within the environmental left with influence inside organized labour.

The original casting of this document was further flawed by dealing solely with the petty bourgeois content of RevPol’s language and sensibilities. It dealt with those questions in a reactionary manner, not treating them within the larger and more serious trend of Ecosocialism, the principal source of RevPol’s assertions. Such an approach abandoned the working class and its revolutionary content. This left the real content of the environmental arguments hidden never revealing the origin of such ideology. This in itself denies the role of the working class who will be the primary victims of any eventual climate change on the scale predicted by the new environmental soothsayers.

Through this process it was necessary to trace the origins of this ‘new’ trend and address many of the arguments advanced by adherents of this, in essence, anti-working class ideology. While in the midst of this it became apparent very early on that this philosophy infects and, to a great extent, dominates much of the content of within the environmental left. This leads honest environmental activists into all sorts of incorrect anti-labour policies and in the end winds up supporting the very industrial concerns they are trying to convince to change their practices. In the extreme it morphs into a bizarre advocacy of shutting down industry and in the course – worker’s jobs. These are not false antagonism as RevPol claims that FOS is instigating, but real antagonisms that exist between working class reality and middleclass illusions.

[1] No New Approvals is an environmental movement centred on the call to curtail, halt expansion or a complete shutdown of Alberta’s oil sands development. Its principle advocates are the Council of Canadians, Sierra Club of Canada, Green Peace, Stop Tarsands Operations Permanently (STOP), among others.

A State of Crisis - Time for a New Response

2008-12-19T13:58:00.003-07:00

Canada is in the midst of a deepening political and economic crisis symptomatic of the general global capitalist crisis. The Canadian corporate power elite are fearful of a united and militant working class. It is a fear that reached frenzied levels with Prime Minster Harper’s coup d'état. Harper’s cowardly parliamentary prorogue was a reaction to the fear of unity within Canadian people by a Coalition government leading to new forms of economic organization and political democracy.

The ruling circles of Canadian financial power could not permit such a sharp political upsurge to penetrate the collective consciousness of Canadian workers. It was urgently necessary for this rising anger and rapid mobilization of workers to be snuffed out. The Governor General Michaëlle Jean was given her marching orders while Harper was lectured by the C.D. Howe Institute, Preston Manning and Tom Flanagan to get his ‘ego’ in check. Flaherty was ridiculed for his inept grasp of the crisis by banks and finance capital that sensed a shift in the rapidly militant political awareness of Canadian workers.

Harper’s parliamentary neo-con ploy was about to bring down the now fully entrenched capital interests of finance, oil and military profiteers. The crass hardened right-wing Reform ideological political aspirations of Prime Minster Harper threatened to expose the secret backroom deals and parasitical crooks of the new emerging power circle around the policies of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE). It endangered a powerful ruling elite who were tasked to administer the nation’s resources in their own interests and along with it access to public funds to keep their Ponzi schemes running.

During this tense period, where it seemed that Harper’s minority Reform Party base would suffer a crushing defeat, the left sat in an almost total state of paralysis and confusion unable to react or mount any minimal form of an offensive while this momentary weakness and disarray gripped Canadian ruling circles.

Instead of mobilizing workers, and quickly responding to the disorientation within ruling circles, the left remained committed to dogmatic slogans and hyper-left sectarian policies of a ‘plague on all your houses’ nonsense. The transitory weakness within the ruling class, as it shook off the remnants of centre-left ‘Dionism’, was met by the Alberta left by dressing up as fairies, elves and smurfs and marching on Mordor.

While this weakness, expressed in calls by a fearful ruling class for ‘cooperation’ and to rally in a less confrontational and less ‘partisan’ manner to address the ‘challenges’ the economic crisis pose to the well being of ‘all’ Canadians, may seem to be fleeting, it is in fact a permanent state of crisis. Within the ruling circles of monopoly capital there are sharp differences of opinion on how to get out of the crisis.

Monopoly capital is far from united. They have manufactured a temporary alliance and truce in the face of rapid rise in workers’ consciousness. Attempts to protect profits and privilege on the backs of a shrinking labour force are being hammered out in secret backroom deals with the newly appointed Economic Advisory Committee of the most powerful business elite in the country.

Conditions that arouse within the December Crisis have not been extinguished, smouldering in the backrooms of finance and industrial monopoly associations and owners. These conflicts will rise again in new forms and crises. Preparing for the next round of crises is essential for Canadian workers. The left must assume a greater role in the development of the ground work.

Parliament may witness a new round of sharp political antagonisms when it returns for the new Flaherty budget in January. These conflicts within capital may emerge in new forms of political alliances and struggle. Or the return may witness a new united right. Either way the left will be called upon to engage in the struggle to defeat Harper in a more militant way.

The economic crisis is revealing the current state of weaknesses and confusion within the left, from communists to social democrats and all variants in-between. It is exposing just how pathetic the left is in its ability to respond to reaction. Canadian workers are suffering a most brutal and protracted attack on their economic well being. Not only are Canadian workers being attacked but the fate of the Canadian state is being challenged. Patriotic Canadians are alarmed at the direction that the reactionary policies of Harper are taking the nation.

It is within this context that a challenge must be launched that exposes, not only the reactionary Harper administration, but hyper-left petty bourgeois sensibilities while at the same time placing before workers programs that can be fought for and united around in their own interests. In reality these forces on the hyper-left are reactionary in nature and in the service of the ruling class.

The economic and material basis of the petty bourgeois does not correspond to that of the working class. Their comfort and privilege is at the expense of workers, and their compensation comes from acting as parasitical agents of the ruling class, some unwittingly, others consciously. This trend is particularly evident within the left intelligentsia centred within the Socialist Project, environmental left and those that garner favour within those circles and seek to be ‘published’. They have a tremendous influence on organized labour and within developing revolutionary youth.

The need to combat this trend is urgent. From the Smoke Pit will be publishing excerpts from an on going and larger study that looks into these trends within the petty bourgeois classes, primarily the phoney eco-socialist movement. The study will address the need for energy as the material basis for Canada’s economic and political development. It will look at the historical development of energy within Canada as guide to action. It will draw heavily from the monumental works of Tim Buck.

It is because of this and a plethora of other environmental nonsense while Canadian workers are in a virtual state of economic siege by the ruling class that has compelled me to take on this on going commentary. The articles will be called ‘Let ‘em Eat Root Vegetables’. This title refers to a particular nasty response and sentiment to an article posted to an Alberta left political discussion bulletin board by someone who is afflicted by this hyper-leftist rubbish. This is where the discussion will begin.

Coalition Government and State Industrial Development

2008-12-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

As the recent dramatic shift in Canadian politics has fully validated, the crisis within capitalist system is creating political conditions that are ever more volatile, hostile and fluid. The deepening economic crisis is opening larger divisions within contending capital forces for shrinking credit pools, which are translating into bourgeois political crises and sharp polarizing fights. Prime Minster Stephan Harper remains committed to his ideological Reform Party oil monopoly support base in Alberta. He will do this at the expense of Canadian workers, Alberta included.

What has started as a sharpening political squabble within the major Canadian political parties is quickly turning into a popular expression of anger within the working class. As uneven, confused and disjointed this sentiment, it is none the less a reflection of the widening economic gap between productive forces on the one hand and finance capital on the other. It reflects the massive global impoverishment of billions of workers under the now fully discredited and failed neo-liberal policies of free market capitalism. Alberta is not immune to these changes.

Canadian ‘economic experts’ like to say that, while Canada’s ‘fiscal fundamentals are sound’; we are not ‘immune’ to the global economic crisis affecting other nations. What they are really saying to the power cabal of Canadian finance, military and energy capital is that the Harper-Reform Party economic policies are sound and will serve your interests, but you must remain vigilant against the growing general anger within the global working class. They warn that Canada is not immune from a rapidly growing working class consciousness now sweeping other parts of the world and developed capitalist economies which is quickly manifesting into demands for state control of the economy. This will not do if you are a finance capitalist.

Cut and Run Harper
I recall the speech that Harper made to the Canadian troops in Afghanistan in 2006 where he said that, ‘Canadians don’t cut and run’. The intimidation of Governor General Micheall Jean by Harper and his band of thugs as they rolled up to her residence in their black limos was nothing more than a mafia Don asserting his turf power. It was a televised right-wing Coup d’état complete with commentary from a host of Harper apologists.

The bullying of Jean into parliamentary prorogue, is an indictment of Harper’s cowardly nature to avoid standing before the Canadian people with his Flaherty ‘on-the-backs-of-the-people’ budget statement. Harper is quick to tell the sons and daughters of Canadian workers not to cut and run, but faced with the anger of Canadian workers Harper is content to hide behind the skirt of the Governor General.

What seems to be shaping up as an attempt by the Harper-Reform Party cosa nostra to fabricate a national unity and constitutional crisis to gain a political majority at all costs, plays well to the underdeveloped Flanagan intellectual ‘giants’ at the University of Calgary and his gated community brain trust. Running from parliament is being packaged as an ‘astute’ move from a tactical genius to gain political advantage and form a majority government. It suggests that Harper is in control and has ‘planned’ the outcome all along. This is farther from the truth and is nothing more than a fearful and cowardly act of political avoidance.

However fearful and cowardly this act is, Harper still retains power and with it all the state instruments for execution of his political and economic agenda. This reminds me of a lyric from the Bob Marley song “The Heathen” from the album Exodus that went, “tis he who fight and run away, live to fight another day”. While Marley was calling on ‘Jah People’ to continue in struggle Harper runs away to fight another election. The only way to stop Harper is to ensure that he cannot fight another day. This must come at the hands of the Canadian people in a crushing and humiliating defeat.

Those that argue the coalition is just same old ‘big business’ agenda need to reconsider that at this historical moment the defeat of Harper is the foremost important struggle. No other progressive struggles will take shape and develop so rapidly under the political revenge that Harper will unleash if he is permitted to govern, or worse govern with a majority. His smug arrogance will be short lived if all progressive and labour forces are marshalled for his defeat, even if the alliance that needs to be formed is not as ‘pure’ as the hyper-left bemoaning from afar crowd would deem.

Opening up the Fight for State Control, Defeating Hyper-Left Rhetoric
What is being placed before the Canadian people is a choice between the proto-fascistic chauvinistic policies of Harper-Reform Party doctrine of finance, oil and military capital or an opening to advance a labour led program of Canadian state industrial development. Even in the context of the manufactured Harper parliamentary crisis, where the full weight of the hardened right-wing political machine is being brought to bear against coalition forces, the possibility for state led and planned Canadian industrial development is well within reach of Canadian workers.

There will be many hyper-left detractors who will howl at such a thought and engage in left sectarian attacks on the coalition. The hyper-left will enter into coalition bashing along with the Harper propaganda machine. This is already to beginning to surface within the Socialist Project where Socialist Voice co-editor, John Riddell, cranks up the sectarian left rhetoric to acrimoniously complain of the ‘fatal weaknesses’ of a Liberal-NDP coalition. Riddell’s vitriolic idiom offers nothing for workers who see an opportunity to bring some immediate relief to their plight of job loss and wage and pension erosions. One wonders who Riddell is speaking to.

They insist that the only way for ‘real’ change and to achieve “specific and immediate gains is to stick to the path of independence from big business and its parties, and rely on the potential of popular movements."[1] This sentiment concludes that within a Liberal led coalition government the levers of power will remain in the hands of big business, providing “massive” handouts to corporate interests.

What is prescription offered for ‘independent’ action? Riddell advocates the following:
“And here is the fatal weakness of the coalition government scheme. Locked inside a Liberal-dominated coalition, the NDP would be unable to campaign against capitalist attacks. Accepting responsibility for the anti-labour measures of such a government could rapidly discredit the NDP and end its ability to continue as the bearer of popular hopes for social change.”

This Riddell argues is the path for ‘independent’ action – a continuation of the same failed social democratic strategy of subordinating labour programs of economic development to the vain hope of NDP electoral victory. The fear in Riddell’s statement is evident – a mass political struggle for a coalition will expose the vacant and parasitical petty bourgeois policies of the ‘labour intelligentsia’. They are offering nothing for labour except more pronouncements of the same Ian Angus eco-socialist world revolution clap trap.

Supporting this opinion, John Riddell asserts that, “A Liberal ‘stimulus’ package is most likely [WO emphasis] to combine massive handouts to big business with attacks on workers' wages and pensions.” Riddell speculates as if he is an authority of the inner discussions occurring within the coalition. Riddell hectors the labour movement from the safety of his university office dispensing advice but little in the way of relief for workers.

However, detractors of a left-centre coalition are now forced to acknowledge that such a bourgeois political alliance opens new opportunities for labour and working class struggles. With correctly crafted demands and programs, these openings can mean moving to the struggle to discussing fully democratic state intervention in the Canadian economy on the behalf of working people. In the context of Riddell’s previous statements, he hides his sectarianism with the following centrist evasion:

“On such a course, and in present conditions, it is by no means excluded that we could prepare the ground for a Venezuelan-type outcome: a sweeping shift in power relationships in favour of working people, the poor and the oppressed, and their organizations.”

Economic Crisis and Political Deceit, Alberta is not all Right
The rapid shift in the political landscape due to the collapsing market economy on the deliberate de-industrialization policies of the Harper administration exposes the weaknesses within the hyper-left which offers lots of advice ‘on the weaknesses’ of the coalition but does not advance demands that will bring relief for workers suffering from the economic crisis.

Maturation of an advanced labour led struggle for state planned economic development can be no less as rapid and striking. The catastrophic failure of neo-liberal economic policies superimposed on a neo-conservative agenda of military aggression are all converging on top of the structural weakness of capitalism – social production and private accumulation.

The developments in Alberta are no less dramatic. On December 4 2008 pro-coalition rallies were held across Canada. They have grabbed the imagination of Canadians like no other have in recent memory. The Harper-Reform Party press is working overtime to counter a rapidly evolving movement attempting to diffuse its underlying democratic sentiment and evolving labour content into a discussion of national unity. Alberta is not buying this line.

The Edmonton Journal reported December 6 2008 that 500 people attended a pro Harper rally on the Alberta Legislature grounds. The pro-coalition rally in Edmonton on December 4th attracted similar numbers. In the best tradition of the US network Fox, the right-wing talk shows are awash in the Harper chauvinism of Quebec bashing that has tattooed Alberta as a bastion simpleminded Reform politics of the Manning Institute. This is not a true reflection of Alberta workers and is an attempt to make Alberta workers complicit in the cowardly Harper-Reform Party cut and run scorched earth politics.

Alberta Labour can make an Historic Contribution
Alberta labour is positioned to make an historic contribution in the fight for the interests of the working people of Canada. What the AFL can contribute in this situation should not be underestimated. The power that Alberta labour commands at this political juncture can be used to express partisanship for all Canadian workers.

Alberta labour is in a position to counter the Harper-Reform tactics of chauvanism. This begins with a firm and unequivocal rejection of the Harper-Reform Party anti-Quebec sentiment. Our sisters and brothers in eastern Canada need to hear that Alberta workers are on the side of working families of Ontario and Quebec, that we stand in solidarity with them as they struggle with job loss and the collapse of manufacturing and forestry.

With the help of his Big Oil lieutenant Ed Stelmach, Harper is attempting to split Alberta organized labour from the larger house of labour. Stelmach is peddling the line that Alberta workers and the Petroleum Club have the same interests and that the tar sands are at stake. This fabrication must be firmly exposed and rejected.

The political crisis opens up new opportunities for labour to exercise its power in new ways. For Alberta workers this means to demand restarting cancelled oil sands projects. All of the attention of the media is being focussed on manufacturing and forestry jobs, as though expansion in Alberta was continuing This deliberate attempt, by the Harper-Stelmach accord, to hide and evade and prevent a discussion by the Canadian people over development, ownership and control of the oil sands, as a means to get out of the economic crisis requires exposure. It requires the leadership of the AFL to tell the truth about job loss in the energy sector and how to turn our industry in a new direction.

As workers we reject the suggestion that it is an either us or them situation. That is the line of the right to prevent workers everywhere in the country to express their solidarity. The workers of Alberta support our sisters and brother in Ontario and Quebec. Alberta has the material base to expand the economy of all regions in Canada.

The Harper-Stelmach policies of shipping raw bitumen south and along with it Canadian jobs have been exposed by the AFL as negative for jobs and employment in Alberta and Canada. Much of the construction projects that should be underway in Alberta are now being built in the US. This impacts the whole Canadian economy and worsens the loss of manufacturing jobs in Ontario and Quebec.

The AFL’s “Black Gold, Clear Vision” document can serve as the basis for explaining this question. It is an important document that must be placed in front of the Canadian people.

Many oil sands projects are being unnecessarily delayed, scaled back or cancelled. This must be exposed. Petro-Canada’s announcement of halting Fort Hills must be reversed. The AFL must demand that this project be restarted as part of the economic stimulus package that will be tabled by the coalition government. It must include demands for an all-Canadian project where pumps, motors, fabricating piping, pipe and equipment modules and electrical and instrumentation along with engineering are completed in Canada first.

Distribution pipelines for the products coming from such a facility must be sent east for refining and sale to other markets. This will inject billions into the Canadian economy and protect Alberta energy sector jobs which are currently on the chopping block. Thousands of Alberta workers are losing their jobs now and this fact should not go unreported and discussed in the context of the current political crisis.

This would also set the stage for a demand to re-nationalise Petro-Canada. David Coles, President of the CEP, is advancing the question of nationalization. If Petro-Canada was in the hands of the people, as it once was, it could be used as a significant buffer against the sole market resource sell-out policies of the Harper administration.

It is incumbent on Alberta labour to break publicly with the Harper-Stelmach policies of resource sell-out and advance a concrete program by Alberta labour in the interests of all Canadian workers. The AFL must step forward on behalf of all workers in Alberta and Canada and state that organized labour in this province does not support such polices and that sell-out our resources to the US is not in the interests of Canadian workers.

It is for these reasons and within this framework that Alberta labour has a key role to play in the present historic discussion about the political and economic future of the nation.

[1] John Riddell, “Coalition Government? Let's Not Give Away The Store”, Socialist Project , The Bullet, E-Bulletin No. 162 December 1, 2008,

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet162.html

Alberta Federation of Labour Rally to Support A Coalition Government

2008-12-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

Let's Make Parliament Work!
Rally to Support A Coalition Government To Address Economic Crisis

During the federal election Stephen Harper promised Canadians he would make a minority parliament work and put our economy first.

Instead he used the political crisis to launch an attack on working people. He announced he was going to slash pay equity, revoke bargaining rights of public sector workers, and eliminate public financing of political parties. And he did nothing to help save jobs and fix the Canadian economy.
Stephen Harper has failed.

We need a government with a stronger vision for Canada. We need to support the proposed Liberal/NDP coalition. They are committed to focusing on stimulating the economy and making sure Canadians keep our jobs. It will reform EI to ensure it protects workers as it is supposed to. It will act to protect workers' pensions. And it will repeal many of the cutbacks enacted by the Harper government.

Why we need a coalition government?

Let's Make Parliament Work! Rally
EDMONTON
Thursday December 4, 6:00 pm
City Hall Plaza 1
Sir Winston Churchill Square

A collection of Edmonton citizens are holding a rally to send a message that they want Parliament to work and to get to work on fixing the economy. They want to say to the rest of the country that Edmontonians support the proposed coalition government.

What Else You Can Do
Contact your MP and tell them you support the coalition government.
Send an email directly

Put Childish Things Aside

2008-12-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

The political crisis unfolding in Ottawa has placed the question of control of energy resource development squarely in front of Alberta working people. What is becoming very apparent is that the “No New Approvals” campaign led by the Council of Canadians and Green Peace is becoming exposed for what it is – opportunism at the expense of Canadian workers.

While the whole country is engaged in the discussion of a coalition government, the environmentalists are organizing more job loss rhetoric with their new “March to Mordor” rally. It is silly and childish based in the fantasy of eco-socialism.

The defeat of Harper is presenting itself and requires the decisive engagement of the working people of Alberta in the struggle for the country. A massive disinformation campaign is being implemented by the neo-con agenda of the Reform base in Alberta to save the Harper administration. Under estimating the power of the neo-con machine will done at the peril of Canadian workers.

It is a power struggle and there should be no illusions what a continuation of a Conservative government will mean for Canadian workers. The full weight of the right wing will be brought down on workers. Attempts to prorogue parliament by Harper will be an effort by the right time to regroup and fight an election for a majority. This is an outcome that workers of Canada cannot risk.

The right will attempt to bully the Governor-General Michaelle Jean to dissolve parliament and call another election opening the door to subverting the Canadian people that, by two-thirds, rejected the neo-con policies of Stephen Harper.

The coalition government opens the door to new demands for labour and the peace movement. If Harper is allowed to wriggle his way out this crisis, a making of his own arrogant anti-worker agenda of finance, military and BigOil capital, will be a significant defeat for the forces of labour and peace. Harper must be defeated and sent permanently to the dust bin of history!

It is an urgent question that requires all progressive forces to place the defeat Harper first on the agenda and leave fantasy in the pages of children’s books. Anything less at this point in Canadian history is an abandonment of Canadian workers.

The Texas Two Step - Harper Dances, Canadian Workers Pay

2008-11-16T00:17:00.000-07:00

Well it is hot off the press - the Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy. The Texas Two Step was executed brilliantly. Step one; manufacture chaos. Step two; reap the rewards. Prime Minster Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty lined up in behind the Bush-Paulson tag team and declared that it would, “give the market some reassurance”. Help was on the way for Wall St., Bay St., financial markets, investment bankers, hedge fund managers, stock market investors and speculators. Working people and organized labour were not mentioned in the declaration.

The world can now breath a collective sigh of relief, the geniuses of finance have crafted a coordinated economic rescue package that is sure to pull the world from the abyss and provide the tools required to mitigate new crises. Backslapping, high-fives and champagne toasts all around. Well done boys!

What does the declaration say? The 3635 word report declared that basically it is business as usual. Along with the usual financial buzz words and pledges to ‘get it right’ next time, the need for renewed fiscal discipline, prudent oversight and similar hot air, the declaration was brazenly conniving and openly manipulative.

The declaration will be touted as the greatest achievement to date of the virtues and strength of unfettered capitalism. Harper will peddle it to the Canadian people as a great accomplishment and evidence of the strength of capitalism to do what is necessary to save the financial system. I am sure that auto workers in St. Thomas will be overjoyed. I can almost hear them now popping the corks on the bubbly.

Quoting from the US managed G20 declaration, national and regional authorities and Finance Ministers should:
· Ensure that the IMF, World Bank and other MDBs have sufficient resources;
· Encourage expanded trade in financial products and services;
· Protect the integrity of the world’s financial markets by bolstering investor protection;
· Respect jurisdictions that have yet to commit to international standards with respect to bank secrecy and transparency;
· Enhance cross border capital flows;
· Reform of Bretton Woods Institutions in order to increase their legitimacy;
· Draw upon the recommendations of eminent independent experts;
· Remain committed to energy security, the rule of law and the fight against terrorism;
· Review proposals by private sector bodies that have developed best practices for private capital pools and/or hedge funds;
· Review bankruptcy laws to ensure that they permit an orderly wind-down of large complex cross-border financial institutions;
· Ensure that financial institutions maintain adequate capital in amounts necessary to sustain confidence;
· Create strong liquidity cushions;
· Monitor substantial changes in asset prices and their implications for the macroeconomy and the financial system;
· Review business conduct rules to protect markets and investors;
· Implement national and international measures that protect the global financial system from uncooperative and non-transparent jurisdictions;
· Review the adequacy of the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks and stand ready to increase them where necessary.

So let me get this straight; give billions more dollars to the IMF so that unelected appointed foreign consultants can advise the Canadian Finance Minister how to expand financial products and services while at the same time ensuring that Canadian banks a fully topped up with taxpayer money, so that Canada can continue the unencumbered flow of energy resources to the US through NAFTA, so that Canada can remain committed to the fight against terror...in Afghanistan I presume. Hum...sounds like the old plan.

On this basis the declaration said that the role of the IMF ‘would be strengthened”. The declaration reaffirmed its commitment to free market capitalism. It stated that it is the, “shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction.” The declaration went on to say that these principles, “have lifted millions out of poverty, and have significantly raised the global standard of living.”

This is just a small sample the ‘new’ neo-liberal policies of regulated markets and oversight. These formulations will fall under the control and be managed by the same, in fact strengthened, financial mechanisms such as the IMF, World Trade Organization and the World Bank that has generated this Made in USA crisis. The Canadian people need to ask Prime Minister Harper; has he been given a mandate to implement such a regime in Canada? It can only mean more unemployment, despair and misery for Canadian working families.

The same day as the Washington Summit by the G20 leaders, venezuelanalysis.com reported that, “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez handed over credits to over a thousand communal banks, he highlighted the need for social networks of distribution and for the private banks to also contribute.” The funds allotted to communal banks in 2008 tripled from 2007 to $1.6 billion US. Chavez also said that he was prepared to make an agreement with the private banks so that an additional fund by the private banks could be setup and raise the total fund to $3.3 billion US.

The report went on to say:
“Chavez noted the irony that while large, small and medium sized banks are collapsing around the world as a result of the financial crisis, Venezuela is ‘giving birth to thousands of banks that are banks of the people, the communal banks, the banks for popular power... and [this] popular power is vital for the future of the revolution... so this ...can't fail’."

Chavez noted that the proceeds from the communal banks must not go into the speculative markets. President Chavez rejects the notion that goods that cost 1 bolivar to produce should not cost 30 after it makes its way through the speculative market.

The Venezuealananlaysis.com reported that Chavez said that giving money to the communal banks is one way of redistributing and breaking the power that was "in the hands of the bourgeoisie who controlled the resources of the country...they managed the whole economy."

This is a tale of two banking systems; the Texas Two Step or the Venezuelan Communal Tango. Canadian workers are in need of the tango. But then again, Harper only has one partner; the US, he only has one move; the Sell-Out Two Step and he is no Chavez.

Stop Playing Footsy with Monopoly Capital

2008-11-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

A month ago, on October 9, 2008, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach travelled to Toronto to deliver a speech to the Economic Club of Ontario where, with the usual provincialism, he lauded the benefits of Alberta’s oil sands for Canada.

The importance the Premier’s comments were not the fact that Alberta, according to the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS,) makes up 18% of Canada’s tangible wealth, 61% of Canada’s natural resources wealth and a valuation 3.5 times greater than all the fixed capital assets of Canada’s manufacturing sector. Stelmach’s comments are not significant because he listed an inventory of the economic benefits for Canada or what Alberta is doing to ‘protect the environment’. They were significant because his comments were a political statement to Ontario manufacturing capital. Not only were Stelmach’s comments a political statement, they were also an indictment on the failures of ‘market capitalism’.

In the light of G20 meetings in Washington, convened to provide a ‘coordinated’ response to the deepening capitalist depression, Stelmach unwittingly provides a thorough argument for public ownership, management and development of Canada’s energy resources. In fact Stelmach makes the case for nationalization of the oil monopolies as a way out of the economic crisis.

Coordinated Response of Public Wealth
In the lead up to the G20 summit US President George Bush said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute in New York that the ‘global meltdown’ was not a failure of capitalism. US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s bank bailout has been totally discredited as a blatant transfer of public money into banks coffers, and that the money is nothing more than a pork barrel for the most rapacious sections of finance and industrial capital to feed from. Predictably Harper and Flaherty lined up with Washington providing a similar economic ‘plan’ for Canadian banks. Harper and Flaherty, along with their oil lieutenant Stelmach, continue unabated in the transfer of Canadian resource wealth to US industry and remain committed to do Canada’s share of the heavy lifting - using public money and Canadian resources of course.

Taking the Bush lead, Flaherty said in a Financial Times op-ed on November 14, 2008 that, “The open market system did not fail in this crisis.” Finance Minster Flaherty suggested that a return to the economic theories of Adam Smith is what is called for. Harper for his part, suggested that the coordinated response to capitalism’s recent ‘successes’ is to find a ‘balanced approach’ with the other industrial powers. Harper’s prescription, as reported in a November 14, 2008 Globe and Mail article, is to unite imperialism in methods to ‘generate global growth’. Harper contends that the way out of the crisis for the imperialist powers must include “measures by Asian countries and others with high savings rates to provide economic stimulus”. In other words the major industrial economies must line up and coordinate the looting of ‘Asian’ workers’ savings and pension funds. China remains the target.

Organized Labour’s Efforts
What is organized labour’s response to the G20 meetings? The AFL-CIO released the ‘Washington Declaration’ ahead of the G20 meetings in Washington. Shut out of the Washington meeting by the G20 leaders, the AFL-CIO is hosting a meeting of union leaders in conjunction with G20 meetings. The declaration is the policy statement of the 3 union meeting sponsors on the response to the economic crisis. The sponsors are the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC-OECD) and Global Unions.

The World Federation of Trade Unions has not been invited to the meetings (WFTU). In fact as part of the declaration and indication of the willingness by the international unions to work for ‘financial banking stability’ in the industrialized nations, and to “have a seat at the table” it added that, “Just as the post-World War II economic settlements included the strengthening of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)… the new post-crisis settlement must address international economic governance”.

The ILO after WWII sided with the imperialist powers and split from the WFTU as part of the new economic world order following Bretton Woods and the Churchill’s Fulton speech in a ‘coordinated’ effort to defeat the ‘Soviet threat’. The Washington Declaration says, “…governments and international institutions must establish a new economic order that is economically efficient and socially just – a task as ambitious as that confronted by the meeting in Bretton Woods in 1944”.

The Washington Declaration outlines the analysis of organized labour in the industrialized nations and lists the tasks needed by the international financial community to “ensure stable and cost-effective financing of productive investment in the real economy”. The labour’s declaration reiterated calls by the major financial geniuses of the industrial powers for a coordinated recovery plan, regulated global financial markets, implementation of a new international system of economic governance and provisions for some redistribution of wealth.

The declaration while calling for “an end to an ideology of unfettered financial markets” and saying that, “those who are losing homes, jobs and pensions as a result of the financial crisis, for which they bear no responsibility, as taxpayers are being called on to bail-out those who are responsible” and that “large parts of the financial system are being supported by the public taxpayer, trade unions insist that governments take equity stakes” also says that the interventions by the central banks and governments are “necessary to save the banking system”.

The Washington Declaration concluded by saying that, “Working people require a seat at the table in these meetings and institutions. They have little confidence that bankers and governments meeting behind closed doors will get it right this time. There must be full transparency, disclosure and consultation. The Global Union organisations are ready to play their role in this process.”

The response by Harper and Flaherty was predictable and a blatant toadying to the discredited neo-con Bush-Paulson tag team demand to tow the line. The AFL-CIO and the Global Unions pledged that they will do likewise and play their role in the necessary process of ‘saving the banking system’ in exchange for a seat at the table and a larger role in the new international economic order. All the pieces are in place the coordinated response is ready.

Alberta, Canada and the Material Base
Bush’s speech was a political statement of both the objectives of US finance capital and demands of US imperialism for other major powers to fall into line under the leadership of US capital. Bush’s speech was an indictment on the failure of capitalism.

So what does all this have to do with Alberta and Stelmach’s speech to the Economic Club of Ontario? Similarly Stelmach took a similar approach in Toronto. While extolling the virtues of the oil sands and parroting Harper’s ‘energy superpower’ thesis (now renamed ‘clean energy superpower’), Stelmach admitted that these achievements were due to public demands for regulation and workers’ efforts in constructing them. Gushing with the enthusiasm of a used car salesman at the ‘achievements’ of the Alberta energy sector in environmental stewardship, Stelmach without thinking admitted that all the ‘achievements’ by the oil monopolies in introducing new technologies for environmental protection came under the ‘strict’ adherence to governmental standards and regulations - hardly a ringing endorsement of market capitalism.

It is widely agreed that while the Alberta Government speaks of the leadership it shows in protecting the environment, oil monopolies continue to pursue extraction and production methods that flagrantly violate and disregard even the most minimal of standards. It is widely accepted that the standards that the Alberta government have put in place are far from adequate. None the less it also speaks to the fact that Governments must appear to not only be ‘involved’ but mandate controls over monopoly capital.

Stelmach explaining to the Toronto industrialists that the Canadian Energy Research Institute will report shortly “that 2.5million jobs will be created, mostly in Canada, by oil sands development” (the report was released on November 10th, unfortunately the $7500 price tag is out of reach of this author) also reminded the Toronto hosts that, “these resources give our country strategic assets of growing importance.”

Stelmach pointed that Ontario manufacturing is being supported to a large degree by the growth in the oil sands energy sector. The Premier identified that 388 Ontario companies with many employing more than a 1000 workers are benefiting from oil sands development. He went on to say that 44% of employment generated by the oil sands is outside of Alberta with a ‘significant chunk” in Ontario.

Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) president Gil McGowan in a November 2007 AFL op-ed entitled “No need to be sucked in by Big Oil’s Big Jobs Scare” discounted the hysteria and threats of job loss and ‘pulling out’ of Alberta being floated by the oil monopolies over the changes to the royalty regime introduced by the Stelmach Conservatives.

McGowan argued that because the industry is price driven and that “the price for oil is clearly going nowhere but up”, that other jurisdictions are raising royalty rates, that the changes made to royalty rates really don’t amount to all that much and finally that “80% of the worlds proven petroleum reserves are under the control of national oil companies – and thus out of reach for Big Oil”.

The AFL president reasons therefore that if anyone is over a barrel it is Big Oil and that the bargaining power is in the hands of Albertans. Citing former Alberta Premier Lougheed, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as examples of hard bargainers to be emulated, McGowan concludes that aggressive bargaining will not scare Big Oil off because they have nowhere else to go.

Brother McGowan complained that “that steps are needed to stop unrefined bitumen from being shipped to upgraders and refineries in the U.S.” and asserted that “as a labour leader, I would be the first to raise the alarm if I thought thousands of jobs might actually be lost in Alberta. But, I frankly don’t buy Big Oil’s scare tactics – and neither should the government.”

Let’s fast forward to November 2008 as the world is gripped in a deepening economic depression with 100’s of thousands of Canadian jobs being lost, manufacturing being dismantled and a massive curtailment of oil sands projects and investment. In fact the only real sector of investment in Alberta proceeding at the same rate is the construction of pipeline capacity to the US.

In a November 6, 2008 CLC Communiqué President Ken Georgetti wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper “once again asking for a meeting before the prime minister travels to Washington next week for a G-20 Summit with other world leaders about the economic crisis.” Harpers response was no chance. The consolation prize? Georgetti will meet instead with representatives of the Obama presidential team.

In a November 14, 2008 Vancouver Sun op-ed Georgetti exclaimed, “Leaders of the international labour movement, including myself, will be in Washington to press our own ideas for real change. We will be meeting with the head of the International Monetary Fund and with representatives of President-elect Obama's transition team. We expect that the world's political leaders will finally heed the voice of labour.” Problem solved. Although as the CLC President pointed out, “I don't expect for a minute that the G-20 heads of government will solve the problems of the world in a single day. What I do hope is that they, our Prime Minister included, see the need for a real change of direction in the troubled days ahead.”

Hope, expectations, needed solutions, the voice of labour...blah, blah, blah. Organized labour needs to say what no one has the courage to say – capitalism is a failed system and does not have anything to offer working people except more misery, hardship and job loss. Demand public control of primary industry.

Now is the time for organized labour to heed its own declarations of playing hardball. Advance a program of national industrialization and demand the nationalization of primary industry beginning with energy and to bring the banks under strict control and provide capital for that development. It is the time to mobilize workers in local committees and bring the full weight of labour to bear on market capitalism.

Stelmach unwittingly advocates for public control as the only way to enforce environmental protection. Paulson advocates for public bailouts. Flaherty provides public protection for the banks by off-loading $75 billion from bank balance sheets onto the public. Harper advocates looting of Asian workers’ pensions and savings as a way out. It is not labour’s role to help monopoly capital in their coordinated attack on foreign workers. All workers need protection.

Stop playing footsy with monopoly capital whimpering cap-in-hand for respect and a seat at the table accepting consolations prizes and demand that if monopoly capital will not provide relief for Canadian working families to get out of the way and the people of Canada will develop the 18% of wealth stored in the dirt of Alberta. Advance labour’s program with the voice of labour – a million workers feet!

Harper’s Resource Sell-Out a Crime against the Canadian People

2008-11-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Ottawa based Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) an economic policy research group released a research report on November 10, 2008 “The Valuation of the Alberta Oil Sands”. The CSLS report concludes that the Alberta Oil Sands make up 18% of Canada’s total tangible wealth. There has been very little commentary on the report to date.

The CSLS report is a very important study for a number of reasons. It establishes a number of criteria for estimating Canada’s primary energy reserves, it makes preliminary connections between development costs and social costs of carbon (SCC) and forms the basis for estimating and developing a program of public ownership of all primary resource and industry. It is the latter point that is essential for organized labour and the development of national industrial development program. The report, with careful study, illustrates the obvious necessity of bringing energy under public control as the material basis for the well being of Canadians.

CSLS concludes that previous estimates completed by Stats Canada were flawed. Stats Canada placed Canada’s total tangible wealth (TTW) to be $6.9 trillion. CSLS estimates that Canada’s TTW is now estimated to be $8.0 trillion. The authors of the CSLS report take issue with Stats Canada’s estimate of 22 billion barrels of reserves and place the total estimate to be almost 173 billion. The CSLS estimate is more in line with other international energy agencies that place total exploitable reserves with current technology at about 178 billion barrels. A full study of the report is essential for those that are serious about gaining a deeper understanding of the importance of the Alberta Oil Sands to the future of Canada.

What is striking and hits one immediately is that almost 20% of Canadian TTW is locked away in dirt! It is no wonder then that all focus is on the development of the oil sands. The CSLS authors conclude that per-capita wealth of Canadians increased by $34,591 to $243,950 or 16% above Stats Canada previous estimates.

Stats Canada’s national wealth accounts categorize tangible assets into produced and non-produced groups. Labour is an added component of the produced category whereas labour has not yet been applied to the non-produced category.

Produced assets include residential and non-residential structures, machinery and equipment, consumer durable goods, and businesses’ inventories. This category of assets has an embedded labour component or, in other words its value has been realized through work.

Non-produced assets include natural resources such as the oil sands, forests, minerals, and other naturally-occurring assets, in addition to land. These are commodities. Commodities have use-values that form the basis of all national wealth and which value can only be realized by the application of labour-power.

Total non-produced assets of Canadian TTW are estimated by Stats Canada to be $2.95 trillion. The CSLS estimate when the revaluation of oil sands is included is just under $4.1 trillion. What is more astounding is that the oil sands make up 61% of all natural resource wealth of Canada and 3.5 times the wealth of all manufacturing fixed capital assets in Canada. According to the CSLS report:

“The oil sands are a very important component of Canada’s wealth. According to official estimates, total tangible wealth in Canada in 2007 was $6.9 trillion. Using our preferred estimate, oil sands’ wealth is almost as important as wealth derived from land and is almost 7 times as important as wealth from all minerals. The oil sands are valued at almost the same level as residential structures and accounted in 2007 for 3.5 times more wealth than Canada’s capital stock in machinery and equipment. In other words, the oil sands, if valued appropriately, are a non-negligible portion of Canada’s tangible wealth.”

This report makes a farce of the Harper brain trust warning that Canada must find ways to “weather the storm” of economic crises, that Canada cannot afford national development programs in this crisis, etc., is a sham. Further, the curtailment of projects in Alberta by the oil monopolies claiming that the global crisis has changed the economic conditions for the development of the oil sands is suspect.

Alberta Oil Magazine.com carried a report on September 16, 2008 entitled, “Why Alberta Can’t Have It All”. The report by the on-line magazine reported on the cost differentials between bitumen processed by Alberta upgraders and costs related to the US Midwest production facilities where the majority of pipeline construction in this province is headed. The basis of the report was a presentation by Cliff Cook, senior vice-president of supply distribution and planning at Houston-based Marathon Oil Co., during an oil sands investment forum held in Calgary by TD Securities Inc. during the summer.

Cook’s presentation, “Midwest Solution versus Alberta Solution” concluded that, “Covering all the costs leaves the modified U.S. refinery with a profit margin of $3.74 per barrel of bitumen processed. That is 12.8 times more than the Alberta upgrader earns by barely running in the black at a margin of 29 cents per barrel.”

Taken in context of the CSLS findings it is no wonder why the flight of capital to lower cost jurisdictions is talking place – profits are 12.8 times higher in the US than in Alberta. Further the fact that 61% of Canadian natural wealth is locked in the oil sands means that US monopoly will be looking to get out of the made-in-US crisis on the backs of Canadian workers.

Questions of environmental protection issues seem trivial when 18% of Canadian TTW is under threat by US oil monopolies. There will be no material base left to make the transformation to a “green economy” if the sell-out by Harper is not halted.

Canadian Banks, Workers and the Farcical “Green Economy”

2008-11-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

Global financial markets and the capitalist system are in the midst of a new cyclical, severe and deepening crisis. The crisis is being managed within the capitalist system and by the very same investor classes whose policies of wide open market capitalism are driving the world’s labouring masses into greater misery and untold hardship and ruin.

Canada, far from the reassurances of Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Carney, is neither immune and insulated nor are Canada’s big banks “fundamentally sound”. Close to half a million jobs have been wiped out in Canadian manufacturing, forestry is devastated, communications are undergoing harsh rationalization with 1300 jobs being axed by Nortel, energy investment is being radically scaled back with an almost total halt in oil sands projects in Alberta, house construction is in free fall with new home starts off over 50% since a year before, consumer spending has virtually stopped and agriculture; cattle, hogs and grain and barley is in crisis.

Canadian working families are under threat and on the verge of being totally ruined and thrown into life-long poverty and despair.

The destruction of the Canadian industrial economy is just the tip of a growing separation between real material production and finance capital speculation. Finance capital growth remains unabated. Finance and speculative capital is the dominant force and consideration within all proposed global financial solutions being bandied about by the leading capitalist nations. Speculative capital persists and entrenched in the planned “coordinated” global approach to crisis mitigation.

The “solutions” proposed by Finance Minster Flaherty ahead of the November G20 meetings in Brazil are described as “aggressive”. The minister announced today on behalf of Canadian people that he is transferring a further $50 billion in mortgages from the bank’s books to Canadian public via Flaherty’s “mortgage purchase program”, increasing the spread between what the Government of Canada lends banks and what the banks charge Canadians and a further $8 billion of public funds to the speculative money markets. Don Drummond Toronto Dominion Bank chief economist said that Flaherty’s measures “are exactly what the banks wanted”.

While Flaherty doles out billions to the banks in a global coordinated attack to “thaw” credit markets Canadian workers are losing jobs by the 10,000’s. The bank’s request for more public money was met by Flaherty with a willingness and eagerness more befitting a lap dog then a Canadian Finance Minster.

The solution to the economic crisis proposed by banking capital is; lend more money - period. Increasing the productive capacity of the nation is completely abandoned in favour of a continuation of the same speculative capital economy. It is within this context that the real needs of workers and those of the casino capitalists are brought into sharp relief when calls for industrial “suppression” are made by the environmentalists.

Canadian workers are asking the basic questions. Where is the productive basis for the massive introduction of renewable forms of energy to come from? With the wholesale destruction and transfer of Canadian industrial capacity to lower labour cost jurisdictions being carried out a feverish pace and the investment capital required, being used to prop up the remaining big 3 US banks, the ability of Canada to make this miraculous transformation to a “green economy” is farcical.