Thought Piece
First, there are some overlooked facts about Canada: It is the second largest country in the world; it has a population of 36.3 million (or 1/10 of the US); it is the 4th largest crude oil producer; the price of Canadian oil is discounted by 2/3 against US oil; storage facilities continue to overflow because oil can’t get to market; Canada has very few pipelines and yet cancelled over $100 billion of new pipelines (including Trans Mountain), with an estimated loss of $86 billion annually; and its global credit rating is quite vulnerable crude oil downturns.
To this day, US environmental NGO’s are spending significant amounts of money supporting Canada’s environmental groups. Still, native North Americans and vast rural areas of Canada remain impoverished. In fact, 30 members of the First Nations Tribes said, “We absolutely do not support big American environmental NGO’s (who make their money from opposing natural resource projects) dictating government policy and resource developments within our tradition territories.”
Inexplicably, Canadians have simply allowed the North American environmental community to prevail. It is hard to understand why an abundance of oil and natural gas of rural land lays in wait for responsible natural resource development.
