'Perfect Storm' Engulfing Canada's Economy Perfectly Predict

[Oscar]

'Perfect Storm' Engulfing Canada's Economy Perfectly Predictable

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/03/Pe ... ign=030815 ]

Years ago Andrew Nikiforuk, citing experts, warned where Stephen Harper's priorities would lead us.

By Andrew Nikiforuk, August 3, 2015 , TheTyee.ca

EXCERPT:

Last but not least, I have warned, since 2008, that governments that do not go slow or save the money from non-renewable resource extraction will bankrupt their citizens and reap nothing but political instability. [ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/09/17/Ra ... -Lougheed/ ]

And now the petro-state of Alberta, an impoverished kingdom with no savings and unrelenting deficits, has arrived at the doorstep of bitumen's future.

Its new NDP government still thinks, and insanely so, that the future lies in fast-tracking more bitumen pipelines for energy markets that are declining or have peaked. It even calls the plan, one crafted by Big Oil, "aspirational."

No commodity that promises explosive price volatility, diminishing energy returns and increasing carbon insecurity on the scale of bitumen can ever sustain a nation, let alone a province.

It is a train wreck in slow motion that will surely immolate innocent bystanders.

The Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano once wrote that "History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'"

It also says: I told you so.

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Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous stories here. [ http://thetyee.ca/Bios/Andrew_Nikiforuk/ ]