Publically owned Oil and Gas Industry for Canada...Good or Bad?

Is it time for Canada’s oil sector to become publically owned?

While I do not agree with publically owned businesses like the liquor board and the care of roads for transportation department, I believe that government run oil industry may be the way to go to keep our economy running, jobs going and job creation.

With less reliance on the United States for refinement we would create and keep jobs here in Canada instead of shipping them to the United States, a country that has become hostile towards our oil while they still support oil from countries that support terrorists.

Saskatchewan’s potash is doing so well it makes me wonder how well Canada’s oil sands would do if we were to kick the oil companies off the land and the provinces started producing it themselves.

Before this happens one huge deal would have to be done and that is building our own refineries close enough to the oil sands so that transport would not be a bigger issue than what Keystone is causing. 

I realize we have the environmentalists’ screaming already at my blog that refineries are pollutants and that no one wants to live by them…we have so much land in Canada where no one lives and no one wants to live and until our reliance on oil and gas comes to a halt, we have to suck it up that everything from our vehicles to the computers we own use this type of energy to make and use.

Many people commute to the oil sands and work for weeks away from home, the same cannot be done for jobs at refineries?

Strict regulations need to be made in order for pipelines to run to those refineries, oil spills do not need to happen damaged pipes need attention immediately. A government run oil and gas industry could make sure of this.

Creation of these jobs would also create stability in the economy. These jobs would also be higher paying, stable employment…something governments need to be making right now.

With all the jobs lost because of oil companies shutting their doors, this would be the perfect time to say ADIOS to these crooked companies that are only here to make money off Canadas resources and at the same time make Canada look like the bad guys to the rest of the world.

All the profit would come to Canada, it would fix our roads, educate our children and put food on the tables of many people who crooked companies have now laid off.

The Alberta and Saskatchewan governments could put people back to work; these governments could start making money again. They could do it by making the oil and gas industry a Publically Owned Company. They could keep this industry from down turns every 5-10 years by making it a publically owned company. 

They could invest in their government’s future and their constituent’s futures by getting oil companies, that do not care about the workers or the people of this country, out of our country and taking over the production and refinement its own oil and gas.

These companies keep saying that if royalties are too high they won't stay, well...lets call them on that. 

We do not need these companies; yes it may be easier to have them do the work…but is it better? Hard work makes everything more worthwhile. Doing things the easy way, may be easy...but it isn't right.

Obviously it isn’t better to have companies that keep destroying our economy when they feel like it by laying off thousands of people and treating of them like crap only to have the government have to support these people while the market is down.

Controlling our own oil and gas industry makes sense, doesn't it? 

Let's put our oil and gas industry back to work under government run, build our own refineries, creating jobs here in Canada and say good bye to reliance on Companies who sell out Canada when it serves them.

Religious Rights vs. Equality

I am not against Muslims wearing turbans or Hijabs in public, just like I am not against Canadian men and women wearing cowboy hats, baseball hats or spaghetti strainers, live and let live.

The problem I have is that because I am not religious and I do not believe in religion I do not have the same rights as people who do believe in this religion.

Muslim men are allowed to wear their turbans in their drivers licence identification. Jewish men do not wear their Kippahs in this ID do they? Are Hutterite men allowed to wear their hats in their drivers licence pictures? I do not believe so. Nuns would not be allowed full head wear during this process either. So why is it only one religion is allowed to have their head wear on during picture Identification?

There is a lot of back and forth debate, with name calling and slander, going on about whether the Turban and the Hijab are religious wear.

I see many Muslim men and women not wearing this head wear and many of them will admit that it is not in the Quran as a religious belief. They will say the Hijab and the Burka are ways to suppress their women and the Turban is to show which mosque they belong to…if that means the turban is a religious symbol, okay I will give that to you, but your driver’s licence is not in color so you still do not need to wear it in your picture.

Many people say if we are allowing Hutterite women, Mennonite women, Nuns and Cancer patients to wear scarves and head wear why we are not allowing Muslim women.I don’t have a problem with Muslim women wearing the Hijab, in PUBLIC.

When it comes to areas where I, as a Canadian citizen, am not allowed to wear a hat, I do not agree that any other individual should be allowed to either. Plain and simple, I do not care if it is a religious belief or not.

You should not have any more right than the person next door just because of your religion.

That said, the Burka is a completely different story. Not only does this garment hide an individual it can hide a weapon. It does not have to be a woman under this garment, as we well know.

When women go to a Muslim country they are expected to cover their heads and/or faces. Like Muslim women we are expected to follow Muslim laws and traditions. While the First Lady did not do this, she was well protected. I don’t think the average woman would be and could very well take the chance of being shot. My point, we are expected to follow Muslim laws and traditions in Muslim countries, but Muslims cannot follow Canadian laws and traditions in Canada? One being, no head wear in our courtrooms and no head wear in our driver’s licences.

Taking off a scarf in a courtroom or a turban in photo identification would go a long way to showing all Canadians that all Muslims want to be a part of our country and not just use their religion as a way to get what they want. No one should get special treatment because of their religion.

I do not believe in any religion. So because a group of people who believe in a religion do, they are allowed more rights than I here in Canada where I was born and raised?

I welcome you with open arms to our wonderful country called Canada, but do not use your religion to get rights in my country that I am not allowed to have myself.

Living on less than $20,000/year in Canada

It is transparency time. My disability is mental; I was diagnosed with Bi-polar disease when I was 28 years old. I worked off and on up until going on disability, which is why I am capable of receiving Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled. I would not be able to receive CPPD if I had not worked.

Here is the breakdown,

From the Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled on my T4A (P) slip my taxable income from them (what I receive for myself) was $6,345.24 for the year 2014.  From CPPD I receive non-taxable income (what I received for my daughter) $2,768.69 for the year 2014.

 In total I received $9,113.88 from the federal government Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled.

On my T5007 slip from the Saskatchewan government box 11 for Social Assistance Payments, which is used for their Disability as well as their Employment Supplement, is a grand total of $2,124.48 for the 2014 year.

The breakdown was $1,556.08 for the year from Saskatchewan Assured Income for the Disabled and $568.40 for the year from Saskatchewan Employment Supplement.

Even though anyone between certain income brackets receive GST/HST and Child Tax Credit, I am going to add the amounts that I receive for them here to give you all the information of what I lived on in 2014 from the governmental offices in Canada as a Mentally Disabled person with one child living with them.

I receive a little more for Child Tax Credit because my daughter was born missing her left hand. She is 13 years old and while she gets along pretty well in life there are daily struggles that can cause extra expenses. As all parents with children who have disabilities are able to receive and qualify for.

Each month from January to May of 2014 I received $523.32, in June it went up to $523.48 and in July I started receiving $528.08. So I received just about as much from Child Tax Credit for my daughter as I did from my taxable income from CPPD. Child Tax Credit grand total for the year 2014 was $6308.56.

Each of us “poor” people gets a check back quarterly called GST checks. Some are GST/HST.

My grand total GST/HST checks each year come to $1,155.00.

We are now receiving the Saskatchewan Employment Supplement because my common law returned to work. Which was difficult for someone with a back that has broken disks, but you take what you can get, so he works a job part time at just above minimum wage; we survive. His wages just cover his expenses, including getting to and from work which is a 1 ½ drive each day, insurance for the vehicle, his bills, etc.

So Taxpayers of Canada my grand total, unless my addition is whacked, comes to $18,701.92 of your hard earned dollars I have had to use to live off of for the year of 2014.

In total, $11,238.36 came from Canada Pension Plan for the Disabled, from Saskatchewan’s Disability program and from the Employment Supplement in Saskatchewan.

I work hard at figuring out which brain altering drugs the doctors put me on which will help me feel “normal” and I work hard at building my self esteem/self worth enough to feel comfortable putting on a smile and greeting you each day at a Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Tim Horton’s or Salvation Army when I am able to return to work.

In the mean time I would like you to know we are also working hard at supplying our own food by growing a garden during the summer, we can and freeze fruits and vegetables so that the funds we do receive can go to purchases we need for my daughters school lunches, purchase ever increasing meat and travel once in a while to see my sons, daughter and grandchildren.

I do not live off the government to “get rich” nor to “stay lazy”. It is not a lifestyle I choose.

I am not just demeaned by strangers but by family members as well, which can make it even harder to build up that self esteem and self worth when chemicals in your brain are not working properly and you start to believe they are right because they are better than you. They are doing better than you, they are successful and they are happy, so why not just listen to them?

What “they” do not understand is that the lack of chemicals won’t allow you to listen to reason; the chemicals only allow you to hear that you are a failure, especially to those who are supposed to be there for you the most.

So when you do start to see a light at the end of the tunnel and someone pulls the carpet out from under you, the fall can be devastating.

While changes have been made in my life and I am back on the tracks I cannot guarantee the wheels will not fall off again, but I can only hope that they will stay on the tracks and while I keep plugging away and gain a forward motion I can only hope and pray I can become self sufficient once again. It would be nice to be able to buy something new without feeling guilt.

It is a struggle trying to live on less than $20,000 a year and much of the time I rely on my credit to get me through the month. 

I thank you for your understanding.

Anti-Vaxxers did not Cause Measles Outbreak

What we are forgetting about Measles is that it doesn't matter if we have gotten the vaccine or not, we can still contract the disease and we can still be contagious with the disease while having it.

I am no scientist, but I have to wonder, with the travelling that people do all over the world to countries that could be but are not as up to date on the vaccinations, countries where the wealthy are very wealthy and the poor are left to die in the streets, China and Saudi Arabia for example why are we blaming “anti-vaxxers” for a Measles outbreak?

We have businessmen, international aid workers, government officials, etc going to these countries and we have people from these countries coming to ours that are not protected from diseases we have supposedly wiped off our continent. And it surprises people that we are just now having an outbreak of Measles?

It won’t matter if someone has or has not had the MMR vaccinations as to whether it takes hold here in North America. It is here because it was brought here from another country by someone who is:

 1. An illegal immigrant

2. A foreign worker/refugee who is not up to date with shots or

3. A person who came into contact with someone who had measles in a country that did not have measles under control.

THAT person could very well have had their MMR, come back to North America without knowing they had the disease and began to spread it…a good example of this is when Ebola made it to United States several times.

Coming down on people who are “Anti-Vaxxers” is exactly the propaganda that government and pharmaceuticals want us to do.

We want to believe we have to protect our children from everything and we can’t. That includes disease.

I believe that one day vaccines will come back to bite us in the ass.

Measles has not mutated they say. So the same strain I contracted as a child of 7 or 8 is the same strain that hit Disneyland and is now in Ontario?

As I said I am no scientist, but I do believe that disease is part of our environment. We keep curing diseases, we keep making people live longer, we have more people on this Earth than ever before and our resources are running thin…your governments are saying this as well.

To me death from disease means there was a reason…and there is a reason, our Earth cannot handle the amount of people on it; death from the hand of a drunk driver makes no sense.

Our governments cannot control when a disease will break out. We are not prepared for this outbreak BECAUSE we ASSUMED the wrong thing, that we had wiped Measles off the face of North America.

Assuming something makes an Ass out of You and Me.

Are people still going to blame those who have not gotten their children vaccinated over the governments who haven’t even kept control of terrorist’s comings and goings?

I am not going to say this is a terrorist attack that would be silly right? Why on earth would a terrorist stand around in Disneyland with Measles? I mean it would be pretty stupid to distract a country with a disease that we have supposedly decimated, but then again…it is being reported that even doctors don’t know what the symptoms look like for Measles anymore it has been so long. 

Anyways, that is just another "stupid" possibility. 

If someone hasn't had their vaccines it is going to mean that they are going to get even sicker, they will have even a greater risk of the worst side effects of Measles. It doesn't mean that they are the cause of the disease.

Babies who have not had the chance to have their vaccines have always been at risk of all diseases, whether or not “anti-vaxxers” got their immunizations or not so stop blaming those who chose to not vaccinate and start trying to place blame on where it belongs…

1.     Anyone who goes to countries that have no immunization guarantees like North America need to be in 2-3 week quarantine after returning from those countries. You want the luxury of world travel, whether you are immunized or not, you can still contract diseases and you can still bring said diseases back to our countries.

2.     Any doctors and nurses that go to 3^rd world countries need to be in 2-3 week quarantine after returning from those countries. You want to help those in need, you can still contract the diseases like Measles and bring it back to the United States or Canada and spread it.

3.      Refugees/foreign workers should be in quarantine for 2-3 weeks after receiving their first doses of immunizations which should be given as soon as they arrive.

Now if testing can be done to prove that they do not have any diseases that are contagious, then quarantine wouldn't be needed, but it is not because people are not vaccinating that Measles is spreading, Measles is spreading in North America because someone brought it here from a country that has no immunization benefits.

***Yes my children are vaccinated.

1975 Pay= 2015 Pay

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/minimum-wage-jobs-pay-roughly-the-same-as-they-did-in-1975-1.2708717

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/140716/dq140716b-eng.htm

When our working poor are making the same amount as they did 40 years ago, but the price of everything from homes to vehicles has been marked up at least 100%, how do you expect the working poor to get ahead at all?

My children are making the same amount as their grandparents and great grandparents did in the '70s, They do not have to deal with the cost of a home being $15,000-$30,000 to purchase and rent it isn't $100-$500 a month but having to deal with the housing of $150,000-$500,000 to buy and to rent being as high as $3000 a month.

We have stopped producing low earners. 

This may sound like the stupidest thing anyone has heard, but I began to wonder why someone would have to work 3 jobs. I understand the money situation and that there are that many low paying positions available, but I also started considering WHY?

Baby boomers parents came from a generation where their parents were sometimes having 7 to 20 children. For instance, my grandmother came from a family of 13 children with the loss of twins at the start of the family. That is a lot of workers and while they are retired now, some are still alive.

My grandmother’s generation, because many families grew up with so many children, did not have a lot of extras, so they tried to install in their children how important it was to earn a good wage, not work at those jobs that you are only making minimum wage; which is important. She and grandpa only had 4 children and that was called the Baby Boomer years. Now that is Funny.

So we went from 7-20 children in a poor to middle base incomes to 3-6 children in that same class base.

Baby Boomers, how many children did you have? I believe if you look at the average household of baby boomers that are on the verge of retiring at an income of $75,000+/year at this time in their life they will have 0 to 4 children.

Again, a drop in the procreation of the working poor/middle class, why?

Two things happen when we do this. The first, because the working poor do not make much, we teach our children from an early age that they need to get into a profession that will make them money, eg. Get into politics, lawyer, dentist, doctors, professional sports, a trade…something that is going to support them and their family better than how they lived and how their parents lived and so on.

Because minimum wage is only a quarter of what a lowest paid professional would make, NO ONE wants to do those jobs.

So what happens, many of those baby boomer children and many of those children of the baby boomers become professionals.

We are left with minimum paying jobs that instead of having 7 to 20 workers doing we now have 2 to 4 workers doing, which is actually less because many of those 2 to 4 workers have become professionals and are in the middle to rich classes.

Two…

We know children cost money, so we don’t have as many. We don’t have as many so we are not repopulating the work force.

Those who are living in the working poor are not able to do things like:

·        Pay bills on time many times

·        Buy any type of home

·        Have our cars fixed so we can get to work safely without going into debt or putting aside another bill

·        Save for our retirements

·        Save for a rainy day

·        Go on vacations…which does not bother us, it is just a point I want to make clear that if you can do this, save, and pay bills…you aren’t poor you are middle class.

·        Pay for extracurricular activities for children

My generation, Generation X and the last of the Baby Boomers, have been accused of flooding the work  force with working poor who are now living off the Middle/Rich class taxpayers. If that were true we wouldn't need immigrant workers now would we?

I have 2 children and two step children that I helped support. My older two have a different mother. They are in their early 20’s. Their careers, for the most part, rely on the oil industry.

My daughter has been laid off. She was on maternity leave last year so will get nothing from Employment Insurance, or at least very little. Her significant other has been laid off as well, but they will be making a quarter of their income on Employment Insurance, if not less. That is working poor.

Could they better themselves, you bet, but who will be doing their jobs? And really, Why should they have to? Their jobs are just as important as anyone other persons. A lawyer could not do my daughter or my son-in-laws jobs properly without the training, so why are they paid such a great deal less? Is their job easier? You don’t have to be as “educated”, but that doesn't mean it is easier.

My son says he will be fine he is still working, but I still worry because not long ago he was in a car accident where he was rear ended and he had to live off his savings for a while, which is now gone.

My son, 17, is graduating this year. He really enjoys welding and we have encouraged him to follow that career. It doesn't guarantee he will be middle class, but it does mean he may be one of those higher paid working poor, so instead of making $10 an hour he might make $30.

Will they have children?

My daughter is 13, but she is adamant that she in no way shape or form wants children, which can change, she is young.

But again…This means less people going into the work force if she still feels this way in 10 to 20 years.

Yes, some in these generations have had more children. While I only helped support and raise 4 children, my best friend has helped support and raise 9 in total in some way shape or form. But on average, we are not having as many children.

We are doing it to ourselves.

We are allowing our working poor to live on less because we believe they deserve less.

So those who are the working poor have fewer children to fill those working poor jobs or teach their few children to go for professional jobs to get out of the rut of being the working poor, not a bad thing but still causing a shortage in the number of people working those teaching, nursing, janitor, bus driver, Wal-mart, fast-food positions.

I will give you a hint, if Costco can pay their workers a living wage and benefits and if other countries can make businesses pay living wages…our “democratic” governments can make Wal-mart and McDonalds as well.

What are the benefits of companies like Wal-mart paying living wages and benefits?

Your tax dollars do not go to paying for the working poor living off the system…BONUS!

Those children that my generation and the generations of working poor after me would not need your tax dollars for the basics of life like groceries and utilities so that we can fix our vehicles to get to those jobs without having to worry about the car dying, the furnace quitting or the toilet plugging up if they were paid a living wage.

Your tax dollars should then be put into Canada Pension Plan/Social Security, education, taking care of our military peoples, health care, transportation, job creation, Right?

The working poor are not expecting or asking for enough to take elaborate vacations, $50,000 vehicles or even $400,000 homes.

They are asking for enough not to have to worry about the car, the baby or the house, the food, the utilities...and they shouldn't have to.

Who is Cleaning Your Toilet?

When the Middle, Rich and Mega Rich classes tell the Poor class they shouldn't procreate it leaves me to wonder…

Who do you think is going to clean your toilets?

For the most part the Middle class do this on their own at home, but think about it this way, who does it in the Malls, Restaurants, theaters, Hotels or Casinos you enjoy using?

I wonder…

Which class of citizens do the Middle/Rich/Mega-Rich believe make the beds in the Hotels they stay in when they vacation in their favorite destination spot? Which class of citizens rings your bill up and hands you those bags of groceries every time you visit a grocery store?

I read comments all the time from Middle/Rich and Mega Rich individuals who believe the poor should stop having children if we cannot afford them, we should have to have a licence to have children in the first place.

What these individuals do not consider is who after our generations are gone and we are not allowed to procreate unless told to is going to clean up after them, cook for them, stock the shelves for them…basically do the manual labor?

Can you see a Lawyer, after spending the night in a $500/night hotel room, washing the bedding and cleaning the room before he leaves the hotel for the day? Can you see yourself cleaning the isles in the movie theater and washing the sinks and toilets after the movie?

Those jobs are done by the working poor, whose children are usually the ones who take over those crappy jobs, thank you very much, unless WE parents drill it into their heads that they are worth more and can be more, the working poor’s children will end up as the working poor right after us…serving the Middle/Rich/Mega Rich Classes.

Before you try telling the poor classes to stop having children, remember who is handing you that coffee, making that bed or cooking that meal at your favorite restaurant, because most likely it isn’t your wife or husband if your family is making over $100,000.

And think, should the working poor have to worry about whether they can pay the utility bill or have the car breaks fixed so they can get to their job safely?

Where are You Buying Your Beer Saskatchewan?

When it comes to liquor privatization the "Nay" sayers do not tell you a lot and leave out a little.

The biggest thing they leave out is that they would lose their cushy incomes. It is a government job and a union job so privatizing liquor would take away their high income jobs. Plain and Simple.

They leave out that it would create more jobs. More liquor stores mean more jobs.

They leave out that in Alberta much of the profit still goes to the School system, child protection, roads, long term care. I dare you to compare these services here in Saskatchewan to Alberta at this time or at any time in the past. 

Privatization of alcohol would not affect, it might even help, these programs. When was the last time you heard about Senior abuse in Alberta? It happens, but there are many more complexes in Alberta that handle Seniors. Many seniors from Saskatchewan chose to retire in Alberta, many have retired in my home town of Medicine Hat. They live out their days in peace, not afraid like they are here.

Road conditions in Alberta are 100x better than in Saskatchewan.

The hospitals in most communities can handle delivering babies, not so here in Saskatchewan. Not one doctor in Kindersley is allowed to deliver a baby, women have to travel to Saskatoon to give birth. Are the doctors in Kindersley, or any small town, not qualified to help a woman give birth?

I won’t speak towards your school system, my daughter has only been in a rural school here in Saskatchewan and I adore the school she is in, but the school system in Alberta I had 4 children in at one time and have one graduating from this year has done everything it can to help my children accomplish their goals to the best of their abilities.

Any time I or my children have been a patient at a hospital we have come come first when we need the attention.

What people tend to forget is that there are those who are worse off then us sometimes. Sometimes when we are sitting in a waiting room of an Emergency room we are going to have to sit a little longer than most because our issue is not as severe as the person next to us. We need to decide whether our attention needs to be dealt with immediately, which is what an Emergency room is for, or whether we can wait until the next day.

The Profits that liquor sales bring in benefit all, but when I can purchase the same type of beer in Alberta $7.00 cheaper than here in Saskatchewan, do you really think that is fair to lose the income here?

I personally cannot drink because of my medications, but we know there are those who go to Alberta to shop on a regular basis, we know that they buy their alcohol there. How much money are they putting into Alberta's economy and you are losing because of your higher prices?

The only reason the prices of alcohol are so much higher here in Saskatchewan is to pay for the governmental union workers who sell the alcohol in the store.

Privatizing alcohol in Saskatchewan makes sense. The jobs it would create would be at lower incomes but there would be more of them. The price of alcohol would drop and people would not have to cross border shop for it, taking money AWAY from your schools, hospitals, child protection, roads and long term care.

Tell me, how much money the liquor stores in Lloydminister make on the Saskatchewan side compared to the liquor stores on the Alberta side?

While I keep being told not to compare Alberta to Saskatchewan because “Saskatchewan is not Alberta”, Saskatchewanites seem to do it on a regular basis on Alberta's ill side. The only problem is, they do not seem to have the facts to back it up.

Saskatchewan wants to be like Alberta, but they do not want to study and follow Alberta's example.

Saskatchewan refuses to learn from Alberta's accomplishments and mistakes.
One of those accomplishments was privatizing alcohol sales. Study how they did it, learn from the accomplishments they were successful at and learn from their mistakes.

That is how Saskatchewan can grow to be prosperous. By learning from those who have done it first and learn from the mistakes they have made. 

Alberta is not perfect, they are going through their difficult times as well, but they have some very good examples that Saskatchewan can learn from.