Tagged: Quebec
In support of $200 fill-ups
Yesterday, I succumbed to self-pity about a gastank fill-up that edged perilously close to a C-note. Contrarian regular Denis Falvey offers a dose of reality:
We will never get off our dependance on gasoline until the cost of a gallon of the stuff is through the roof. That’s what makes the alternatives affordable.
I am told that Quebec is currently building the infrastructure necessary for electric cars, and has an $8,000 allowance for each person buying a Volt. Whether that is good or bad, do you think it would happen with gas at $0.50 a gallon?
As long as fish caught off our coast can be shipped to China for processing and then sold on our market two things are true – gas is too cheap, and so is Chinese labour.
Smile! This is change happening. Local may become important again.
That Layton surge in Quebec
What to make of the Layton’s remarkable late-campaign surge in Quebec? Contrarian friend Richard Stephenson suggests an explanation:
We have been told repeatedly that the voters are tired of these frequent (and expensive) elections. I suspect many are tired of the stories the Bloq and the Liberals have been telling. Having voted consistently for the Bloq over the past decade, maybe the people of Quebec are tired of the story they’ve been sold, and are now looking for a Federalist party they can trust….
[T]he Liberal Party in Quebec is in disgrace because of the sponsorship scandal and the ongoing scandals in the construction industry. [Quebecers] cannot vote PC (too far right, too Alberta) and they do not want to vote Liberal or Bloq, so they have only the NDP and Layton left. It’s by no means certain that the voter in Quebec would recoil from supporting a small left wing party that has no hope of becoming the government. After all this describes the Bloq, doesn’t it?
Simpson scopes the Labrador war
Jeffrey Simpson has a sensible column on NB Power’s proposed sale to Quebec Hydro, which he correctly portrays as the latest battle in the decades-old war between Newfoundland and Quebec. That’s a war in which Nova Scotia is no innocent bystander.
Simpson, who spoke in Baddeck Friday, can’t disguise his contempt for Danny Williams, the uppity colonial, but he has the broad strokes of the conflict right. He notes Ottawa’s “desperate” reluctance to intervene on behalf of the weaker party, a bit of realpolitik that might cause one to wonder whether Canada really is a country after all.
Hydro Quebecwick unveiled
Inter-provincial power grid diagram shows the startling degree to which Nova Scotia is an energy island. This is a big obstacle to the development of local renewable energy supplies like wind and tidal, which are intermittent and therefore require robust interconnection with nearby power porducers and users. The Hydro Quebecwick deal means that any increase in our connectivity with the rest of the world will be at the mercy of the new monopoly owner of the grid, the Government of Quebec.
Premiers Shawn Graham (NB) and Jean Charest (QC) have unveiled the details of the Hydro Quebecwick deal. Quebec gets a monopoly on eastern Canadian access to US power customers; New Brunswick gets a mess of short term pottage and some debt relief, but gets to keep two white elephant dirty coal power plants. This may one day turn out to be as big a fleecing as the one Quebec gave Joey Smallwood 40 years ago.
It’s hard not to see this as a dark day for the rest of Atlantic Canada. Bye bye, Green Grid, a critical element in developing promising renewable but intermittent local Maritime energy sources like wind and tidal. Bye bye, fair access to US electricity markets, an equally critical element in developing those resources.
David Wheeler take note: This is very bad news for anyone anxious for action on climate change in Atlantic Canada. Considering he was blindsided, Premier Darrell Dexter’s response has been appropriately dignified, but make no mistake: this presents his administration with a huge challenge. Like Newfoundland, Nova Scotia’s influence on the national stage has reached such a low ebb that hardly anyone there will give it a thought.
See also: News release. MOU. MOU summary. (All are PDFs.)
