News Why do countries nationalize their resources?

[fourier jr]

In other words, stockpile resources and eliminate all trade?

i don't know what ever gave you that idea.
re: raw materials even the United States was a mere resource-exporting colony at one point. remember? they exported cotton to industrialized britain, when manchester manufactured most of the world's textiles. even british columbia, from time to time, has banned the export of raw logs to other parts of the world, presumably to keep other logging-related jobs in the province. in the late 1800s sweden was in roughly the same situation Canada is in right now, except all their industries were owned by british & german industrialists. then their politicians noticed & finally did something about it. check out "open for business" by gordon laxer & "not for export" by glen williams

re: national grid many studies have been done on the benefits of a national power grid, starting with the diefenbaker government in the late 1950s. most recently, premiers gary doer (manitoba) & danny williams (nfld & lab) have expressed interest in a national grid. doer in particular said that he would prefer to export power to ontario rather than the USA but the infrastructure doesn't exist for it. ontario energy minister has also said that he's interested in a national grid. ontario sure could have used whatever extra electricity they could get last summer couldn't they? their grid was severely strained due to their heat wave. the definitive book on this is "white gold" by a sfu sociology prof who also worked for bc hydro for ~15yrs, karl froschauer.
http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/story/mb_dam20040930.html

"I really think Canadians need to focus on the need for an east-west grid, and that we need to begin to really talk about energy self-sufficiency and energy security. I hope that Canadians will turn their attention to this and understand that we have a remarkable opportunity. My hope is that governments can come together and find ways that all of us can benefit" -- dwight duncan

http://www.electricityforum.com/news/aug04/onengrid.html

"Premier Williams said there are many options which have yet to be fully explored including selling power to Ontario, facilitating the sale of power through an Atlantic Canada route via an underwater cable, and evaluating how the province’s untapped hydroelectric potential could fit into a National Energy grid. Serious consideration must also be given to exploring all options for using Lower Churchill power to generate economic development within the province of Newfoundland and Labrador"

http://www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2004/exec/0920n05.htm

re: oil/gas a recent cibc study just came out saying that Canada could potentiall yhave the largest reserves of oil & gas in the world by 2010, even bigger than saudi arabia's. it will also be one of the only parts of the world also allowing private investment in the oil industry. why? why are so many other countries nationalizing their oil & gas? we should look at the obvious benefits of the liberals' national energy program (given in "canada & the reagan challenge" by stephen clarkson) to see what that could for us.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/01/10/canada.oilsands.ap/ (for example)

The Canadian Press said Monday a Leger poll suggested 49 per cent of respondents want petroleum resources nationalized while 43 per cent said they would like to see the same fate for gas companies

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/09/05/leger_gas_poll20050905.html

 

[subodei]

You said you wanted to ban the export of raw materials

That would destroy the Canadian economy, as we make an extremely large amount of money off those exports, and we don't need those materials ourselves. So by banning the export of raw materials we would be stockpiling raw materials and deriving no benefit from them whatsoever.

Nationalizing the power grid is a totally separate issue.

 

[fourier jr]

You said you wanted to ban the export of raw materials

That would destroy the Canadian economy, as we make an extremely large amount of money off those exports, and we don't need those materials ourselves. So by banning the export of raw materials we would be stockpiling raw materials and deriving no benefit from them whatsoever.

Nationalizing the power grid is a totally separate issue.

no we wouldn't be stockpiling our resources, we'd be using them in our own industries rather than giving them to the US, etc to use in their industries. Canada would produce finished products rather than bits & pieces. we could have aircraft, shipbuilding, farm machinery, auto industries, etc. Canada is capable of creating all of those.

 

[ShawnD]

the United States was a mere resource-exporting colony at one point. remember? they exported cotton to industrialized britain

Why spend a bunch of time doing something yourself when you could just order products to meet your low demands, and do it at a lower cost? It's part of the "buy what you need, sell what you don't" mentality that most countries and companies go by. Look at any company and you'll see they don't make most of what they use. Miller makes beer; they do not grow hops, or barley, or yeast, or sugar. They buy all of those things, put it together as beer, and sell beer. On the flip side, a farmer does not make beer; he grows barley. He sells that barley to Miller, and he may even buy back his own barley in the form of Miller beer. In the end, both the farmer and Miller benefit by focusing on what they do best - growing barley and making beer. The United States had lots of cotton, so they sold cotton.

why are so many other countries nationalizing their oil & gas?

Those countries have dictatorship governments. Iraq has insane amounts of oil, and it's nationalized. Do the people benefit from it? Saddam was a billionaire while his country was rather poor, so no. Iran? Same thing. Saudi Arabia? Again, the same thing. USSR sold its oil because that was basically the only thing anybody wanted from the soviets, and most soviets were still poor. That country is just now getting back onto its feet since private investment and greed have returned.
As for the east-west power grid, why the hell would you want that? Power loss in wires is directly proportional to the length of the wires, and you're thinking of running wires across more than 5000km of land? Why don't we just save time and set our oil reserves on fire. That way we can waste the energy right now instead of waiting until the infrastructure is built.


What you need to keep in mind about those nationalization surveys is who are they asking? Alberta controls the vast majority of Canada's oil, but Albertans are the ones most in favour of keeping oil and gas privatized. Your link even states that, with Alberta being the least in favour of nationalization "Forty per cent of respondents on the Prairies and 36 per cent of Albertans were in favour."
Now ask yourself, why would Albertans, the people with oil, be the least willing to give it to the government? The answer is very simple - Alberta thrives as long as that energy is private. It means the money is held by corperations, and that money goes to people who work for those companies, which is then leaked into the local economy. Fort McMurray is a great example of this. It's a town sitting on lots of tar sand, lots of money. Workers get paid lots, land value is extremely high, everything is expensive, and everybody is rich. If that tar sand were to be nationalized, the money would no longer belong the corperation centralized around that town; it would belong to the government located thousands of kilometers away who couldn't possibly care less about Fort McMurray. It wouldn't be a situation of Albera works, Alberta prospers. It would be Alberta works, rest of Canada steals from Alberta.
It may seem greedy for Alberta to want to stay prosperous without sharing any of it, but ask yourself this: what has the rest of the country done for Alberta? We lost billions and billions of dollars to Trudeau's stupid ass national energy program which forced us to sell oil to the rest of Canada at below market price. Do we get trees from BC below market price? How about fish from the maritimes? Or Manufactured goods from Ontario? Dream on. We're getting screwed. It'll be a cold day in hell when Canada takes our oil away from us.

 

[shmoe]

17% of votes went to NDP, but they only have 29 seats; while 10% went to BLOC yet they somehow have 50 seats. WTF?

The block's support is localized in Quebec (obviously), the NDP's is spread across the country. This makes it easier for the bloc to win seats with a given amount of the popular vote as these votes aren't spread around in ridings they have no chance at all of winning. Overall popular vote means little, winning seats is what counts.

Let's make an extreme example with three parties A, B and C, and there are 308 ridings. In each of the ridings 1-155, A gets just over half the votes in each riding, B gets just under half and C gets none, so A has just won each riding and has a majority government. In ridings 156-308, A gets no votes, B gets just under half in each, C gets just over half in each, so C wins all these.

End result
A 155 seats, about 25% of the popular vote, majority government
C 153 seats, about 25% of the popular vote, the official opposition
B 0 seats, about 50% of the popular vote, political obscurity.

It could look worse if C had some votes in ridings 1-155, party A could have a majority government with something like 17% of the popular vote. There's lots of other strange scenarios you can come up with. the point is, a high popular vote percentage isn't nearly as important as having these votes in the right ridings. It does no good to have 100% of the votes in a riding, you only need to win it, no crush it.

Admitedly this is extreme, but it's what happens to the NDP compared to the bloc and the other parties. I think the NDP still push a system of proportional representation which is designed to kill off some of this popular vote vs #of seats discrepency (also used in New Zealand and Germany I think?). Other 'fringe' parties would have a chance under a system like this, the green party would surely get some seats, but so might the communists, or a heroin party, or the rhinos.

 

[iansmith]

Admitedly this is extreme, but it's what happens to the NDP compared to the bloc and the other parties. I think the NDP still push a system of proportional representation which is designed to kill off some of this popular vote vs #of seats discrepency (also used in New Zealand and Germany I think?). Other 'fringe' parties would have a chance under a system like this, the green party would surely get some seats, but so might the communists, or a heroin party, or the rhinos.

Not to go off track too much but Germany has mix system. Half the seats are based on ridings and the other half are based on proportional representation. So when you vote, you vote once for an MP and a second time for a party. For example I am in Alexa McDonough's riding, I would vote for her as a MP but I can give my party vote to the liberal party or any party that I like best. There is also a minimun requirement to get seat from PR. It is 5%. I personnaly like this system but when hear the politician talking it is not going to happen soon. John Manley was saying that the Canadian are not used to coalition and making the parlement work with minority government.

So based on the German system, we would roughly get 121 conservatives, 43 BQ, 43 NDP, 100 liberals and 1 independent. The green party would not get any seats because they did not reach the minimun 5% required. The excess seats are basicly divided amongs parties based on their total votes. so with this system the block would lose some power and the NDP would win some. Conservative and liberal would be the same.

 

[shmoe]

So based on the German system, we would roughly get 121 conservatives, 43 BQ, 43 NDP, 100 liberals and 1 independent. The green party would not get any seats because they did not reach the minimun 5% required. The excess seats are basicly divided amongs parties based on their total votes. so with this system the block would lose some power and the NDP would win some. Conservative and liberal would be the same.

That it mostly helps the NDP, and not those currently in power, is a huge roadblock for getting a system like this adopted! I'd be betting the Greens would get more votes if we had a system like this, there's less worry that your vote is 'wasted' so they'd likely pass the 5% fringe safeguard (they were around 4% this time I believe), but this is just idle speculation.

 

[quantumcarl]

Canadians vote for a party, not for a person.

they may vote for a party because of the lily person who will be elected by the party, but that is as close as it gets to US style elections.

I found it odd at first when my Canadian friend told me about it, but now I wish we had a more parliamentary kind of system... seems that more accountability is present in the system.

Thanks dude. Its kind of a cool system.

You don't see your prez on the floor with the rest of his house members defending a policy by screaming like a kindergarten kid at the opposition.

Its almost like hockey.

And not much gets done.

Hmmmmm

America, the beautiful! eh?

 

[iansmith]

That it mostly helps the NDP, and not those currently in power, is a huge roadblock for getting a system like this adopted! I'd be betting the Greens would get more votes if we had a system like this, there's less worry that your vote is 'wasted' so they'd likely pass the 5% fringe safeguard (they were around 4% this time I believe), but this is just idle speculation.

That would not help those in power and that is why we should expect any change with our federal voting system even if the NDP comes to power.

The advantages with the german system is that strategic voting actually work. I always laugh when people try to vote strategically with our system.

 

[Treadstone 71]

Our system was designed before even the invention of the telephone. It's time for a reform.

 

[fourier jr]

Why spend a bunch of time doing something yourself when you could just order products to meet your low demands, and do it at a lower cost? It's part of the "buy what you need, sell what you don't" mentality that most countries and companies go by. Look at any company and you'll see they don't make most of what they use. Miller makes beer; they do not grow hops, or barley, or yeast, or sugar. They buy all of those things, put it together as beer, and sell beer. On the flip side, a farmer does not make beer; he grows barley. He sells that barley to Miller, and he may even buy back his own barley in the form of Miller beer. In the end, both the farmer and Miller benefit by focusing on what they do best - growing barley and making beer. The United States had lots of cotton, so they sold cotton.

...& then they gave up their comparative advantage in natural resources & started up indigeneous industries. singer sewing machines was one of the 1st american multinationals. sweden gave up its comparative advantage in exporting raw materials & started up their own industries also, & not long afterwards they perfected the diesel engine, produced lots of ball-bearings & invented dynamite. if you want to know more why not just email gordon laxer yourself? he's director of the parkland institute @ u of Alberta. wait why not ask him in person since you're in edmonton. (the belly of the beast, as it were).

Those countries have dictatorship governments. Iraq has insane amounts of oil, and it's nationalized. Do the people benefit from it? Saddam was a billionaire while his country was rather poor, so no. Iran? Same thing. Saudi Arabia? Again, the same thing. USSR sold its oil because that was basically the only thing anybody wanted from the soviets, and most soviets were still poor. That country is just now getting back onto its feet since private investment and greed have returned.

if you look at all the south-american countries they don't have dictatorship governments & they nationalized their oil so the people of the country get the profits. pretty much all the governments use it to help the general public, rather than the rich like Canada does.

As for the east-west power grid, why the hell would you want that? Power loss in wires is directly proportional to the length of the wires, and you're thinking of running wires across more than 5000km of land? Why don't we just save time and set our oil reserves on fire. That way we can waste the energy right now instead of waiting until the infrastructure is built.

at the time the 1st feasibility studies were being done (late 50s), Canada was already the world leader in preventing losses over long distances. churchill falls & james bay are kind of far from montreal. you can email karl froschauer (former bc hydro engineer or something & now director of the inst of Canadian studies @ sfu) about that also since his address is publicly available on the sfu site. maybe it wouldn't hurt to email dwight duncan, gary doer & danny williams & ask them why they would want to be a part of a national grid when it's apparently so impracical. email dwight duncan especially since he's in the middle of yet another fesability study on a national power grid.

What you need to keep in mind about those nationalization surveys is who are they asking? Alberta controls the vast majority of Canada's oil, but Albertans are the ones most in favour of keeping oil and gas privatized. Your link even states that, with Alberta being the least in favour of nationalization "Forty per cent of respondents on the Prairies and 36 per cent of Albertans were in favour."
Now ask yourself, why would Albertans, the people with oil, be the least willing to give it to the government? The answer is very simple - Alberta thrives as long as that energy is private. It means the money is held by corperations, and that money goes to people who work for those companies, which is then leaked into the local economy. Fort McMurray is a great example of this. It's a town sitting on lots of tar sand, lots of money. Workers get paid lots, land value is extremely high, everything is expensive, and everybody is rich. If that tar sand were to be nationalized, the money would no longer belong the corperation centralized around that town; it would belong to the government located thousands of kilometers away who couldn't possibly care less about Fort McMurray. It wouldn't be a situation of Albera works, Alberta prospers. It would be Alberta works, rest of Canada steals from Alberta.
It may seem greedy for Alberta to want to stay prosperous without sharing any of it, but ask yourself this: what has the rest of the country done for Alberta? We lost billions and billions of dollars to Trudeau's stupid ass national energy program which forced us to sell oil to the rest of Canada at below market price. Do we get trees from BC below market price? How about fish from the maritimes? Or Manufactured goods from Ontario? Dream on. We're getting screwed. It'll be a cold day in hell when Canada takes our oil away from us.

for one thing, ontario subsidized Alberta for decades, & didn't hear a word of thanks as far as i know. again, just as the rich people in venezuela can't stand chavez (& likely similar to the situations in other south american countries) the rich people in Alberta can't stand the "ottawa mandarins" like trudeau who wanted to help out the Canadians who weren't so well off. i ask again, why would a non-dictator like chavez want to nationalize the oil industry in venezuela, one of the major non-opec oil-exporting countries?