While they're at it , they

While they're at it , they should do a report on the whole lobby industry. One aspect should be how much money companies, unions, any and all organizations who give to political parties/politicians.

Dilemma

Lobbying has an unsavory aspect to its character, in that it seems to allow money to disproportionately affect public policy. Thus those citizens who do not have money often get ignored by government.

On the flip side, if citizens require government action on some issue that is being ignored, how do they encourage such action without some organized form of contact with the requisite government officials? That contact is, essentially, lobbying.

Thus I might like my lobbying but dislike yours, for example, in that we may request antithetical actions on one issue. "Make it easy for me to build that pipeline," asks an energy company. "Stop them from building that pipeline," asks an environmental organization.

Government is in the unenviable position of having to moderate in some sensible and publicly defensible way between these positions.

What becomes ugly is the situation in which a particular government allies itself unequivocally with one party or the other. Ugly, as well, is the situation in which government is co-opted by secret agreements, bribery, and other forms of corruption.

I believe that lobbying needs to be permitted, but that no public servant should ever be allowed to become a lobbyist (or vice versa). Further, all lobbyists should be registered, and the contents of all lobbying meetings should be recorded and made public in a timely fashion.

Naturally, such regulation would force lobbying to be much more transparent and probably less effective, but it would allow necessary messaging to proceed, as well as enable concerned citizens to judge the comparative value of lobbyists' requests.

Dilemma

Lobbying has an unsavory aspect to its character, in that it seems to allow money to disproportionately affect public policy. Thus those citizens who do not have money often get ignored by government.

On the flip side, if citizens require government action on some issue that is being ignored, how do they encourage such action without some organized form of contact with the requisite government officials? That contact is, essentially, lobbying.

Thus I might like my lobbying but dislike yours, for example, in that we may request antithetical actions on one issue. "Make it easy for me to build that pipeline," asks an energy company. "Stop them from building that pipeline," asks an environmental organization.

Government is in the unenviable position of having to moderate in some sensible and publicly defensible way between these positions.

What becomes ugly is the situation in which a particular government allies itself unequivocally with one party or the other. Ugly, as well, is the situation in which government is co-opted by secret agreements, bribery, and other forms of corruption.

I believe that lobbying needs to be permitted, but that no public servant should ever be allowed to become a lobbyist (or vice versa). Further, all lobbyists should be registered, and the contents of all lobbying meetings should be recorded and made public in a timely fashion.

Naturally, such regulation would force lobbying to be much more transparent and probably less effective, but it would allow necessary messaging to proceed, as well as enable concerned citizens to judge the comparative value of lobbyists' requests.

When you think about it,

there isn't much difference between lobbyists and pimps. And they both provide about the same bebefit to society.

"Never ever believe a

"Never ever believe a politician, nor expect the mainstream media to hold one to account."
-ex politician Rafe Mair

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
-Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
-Denis Diderot

Harper a pimp?

These resource pimps are bad enough; that we allow pimping of our resources by foreign interests is worse.

If you are going to pimp or allow yourself to be pimped, at least keep the money at home.

Global Oil Scam

Google the "2.5 Trillion Oil Scam - slideshare" and google the "Global Oil Scam." Canada is a victim of this scam. Imperial Oil, Shell and Suncor are "silent partners" in ICE. Harper is Canada's George Bush. Plug your electric car into your household, solar power battery.

Actually, it isn`t really

Actually, it isn`t really just an oil scam, which is only a part of the overall, global scam of imaginary monetary figures overriding physical realities and distorting measurements.

1m and 1 kg are the same anywhere on Earth, strictly protected by laws, but when imaginary monetary monetary figures are used for the same measurements, their sizes can be changed to anything the rulers can use for their own benefit. In other words, those imaginary figures become weapons of conquest.

Basically just another religious theory collectivizing the world, enslaving humanity and destroying the ecology.

Ed Deak.

Disrupted in Victoria

Just returned from the KinderMorganTransMountain pipeline project 'info session' and there was a slight glitch; disapproval became tangeable as a group of people removed the KMTM posterganda from the display tripods and replaced them w/ their own hand-made posters and then sat atop the KMTM posters. The KMTM team was stunned, to understate the response and exited the room via the back door within minutes!

The symbolism was remarkable and though I was not involved in the action, being witness to it filled my heart with... relief. This was so much more satisfying than simply muting the TV or turning off the radio :-)

By way of a continuation of dialogue, a mic and speakers were set up by the dissenters and people were given the opportunity to speak their opinions. Unsurprisingly no-one spoke up in favour of the project while I was there.

It may sound like a questionable tactic (or unfair as I heard one person remark) but it certainly underlines the inequity of the resources of the pro/ anti-pipeline camps. And no doubt, it was seen as a direct hit against the KM propaganda from those that are passionate about shutting down the pipelines that are being touted as our salvation.

I am thankful that no-one torched those slick posters because I love that new arts wing addition at the Cedar Hill Rec centre. I think the burning of things may still yet happen though.

good line, Ed

"1m and 1 kg are the same anywhere on Earth, strictly protected by laws, but when imaginary monetary monetary figures are used for the same measurements, their sizes can be changed to anything the rulers can use for their own benefit. In other words, those imaginary figures become weapons of conquest."

Lord knows I don't praise you much, but this bears repeating on every blog and washroom walk from here to Westminster and beyond to Beijing.

Thanks zalm.....you're

Thanks zalm.....you're welcome to go around and paste or post it anywhere.

For monetary economic purposes physical dimensions don't exist but are overruled by imaginary figures.

Note when our politicians and the monetary priesthood of economist quote figures, they`re never in physical dimensions, but in x number of bucks, that can be changed at will.

We shop twice a month and when we go tomorrow, prices will be higher than 2 weeks ago, which means that the sizes and dimensions of what we buy won`t be the same, but smaller in a controlled market, stealing people blind.

Now try to explain this to politicians and so called "economists".

Ed Deak.

Harpy dances with Mammon

The Harpy Government has sold its soul to Mammon and flips the bird at Canada, Canadians and Mother Nature at the same time. They're running us over with their OmniBUSes.

They're expecting the Rapture

They're expecting the Rapture at any day.

Like Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt said :"When the last tree is cut, the Lord will return"

They're only trying to hasten the happy day when they're going to be yanked, naked, into the heavens.

Ed Deak.

If we define 'petro-state' as

If we define 'petro-state' as one in which oil and gas commodity prices largely determine its economic outlook, then Canada has been a petro-state for the last hundred years and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. This is just part of the nature of being a huge, resource-rich territory with a tiny population. While reforming Canada's lobbying laws might be a noble goal in general, I think the amount of contact between oil industry and government is neither a cause for alarm nor an indicator of any sort of foul play in light of this simple truth.

Were the timeline of the Polaris study extended before 2008, I suspect you would see similar levels of contact between past governments and the oil and gas industry for most of the 20th century.

Hardly 100 years ijij

Leduc #1 and #3 came in on May 21, 1947...Alberta, arguably, has been a 'petro province' since the 1980s but Canada can only be said to be a petro state since, at the earliest, the conclusion of the NAFTA deal with the US.
Some modern, industrialized states such as Norway (who have significant oil wealth)have chosen to segregate oil revenues in a special fund to finance government pensions and other long-term needs. Norway chose to direct carefully the development of oil and natural gas in its portion of the North Sea via a government-owned oil company.

It may come as a surprise to some that Alberta actually set up a similar scheme (a fund for oil revenues and a government-owned oil company when the oil sands were first being developed. It may also be a surprise that Norway used the Alberta scheme as a template for its own.

Unfortunately, subsequent Alberta governments stopped funding the "Heritage Fund" in 1987, since then (as Nikiforuk related in his book on the Tar Sands) Alberta has used it as a "slush fund" for various projects.

In fact, the Alberta Energy Company, set up to allow Albertans to prosper as the tar sands were exploited, was sold to EnCana Corporation by the provincial government in 1996.

Interesting to compare Norway with the UK - which, under Margaret Thatcher, squandered virtually all its North Sea oil riches and has less than nothing to show for it today.

@GWest

It can obviously be debated exactly when and to what degree Canada has become dependent on the oil and gas industry. What I want to emphasize that it seems backwards and misleading to say that Canada is a petro-state according to the definition I posted before because of the oil and gas lobby. Rather, it's a petro-state because of the size of its oil and gas reserves relative to that of its population, and the size the oil and gas lobby would seem to be an artifact of these circumstances. When the economic fortunes of a country rise and fall with one sector of the economy, there tends to be a lot of contact between the representatives of that sector and the government.

Of course, if we're using the term petro-state to compare Canada to Terri Lynn Karl's sketches of corrupt states with weak institutions in The Paradox of Plenty, that's another discussion entirely.

Not sure what your point is

You're the one who stated Canada had been a petro state for 100 years - I simply pointed out THAT isn't true.

That it is a petro state now - and therefore the government is increasingly a target of petro chemical lobbyists seems rather obvious.

Nikiforuk is simply describing the symptoms and I pointed out, as he has done, that a petro state need not become the puppet of the oil and gas industry. However, such independence of thought and action doesn't, and won't, come from a government like the one we have in Ottawa.

Cheers

Rapture Cmapture.

Truth is the Northern Gateway is inherently unsafe. One point four kilometers (as per gateway ads) does not make a safe passageway. Anyone who has battled the weather on that coast knows it, which is why skippers, pilots and ordinary fishermen have come out against the Northern Gateway to Hell.
What will happen if they go ahead, is there will be one monumental oil spill, and after that there will be nothing left to protect.
Of course they won't be responsible; that is what they hire lawyers for, but we here in BC will still have to add up the damages and pay them, because your can bet your ass nobody else will.

Our country Pipelandistan: Capital transfer your future now!

Were Alberta to discover they have a bounty across their land of lovely lemon trees...

Would they, like Norway, use their new-found resource to make their nation, over a few decades, one of the wealthiest the globe?

No, the Albertan coy wait for hucksters in nice suits whose earnest pitch: Don't dirty your hands! Let others do that foul work for you!

And, do they look to the old World? Then stand proud to answer: Let us send old Europe our excess; the better to rescue it from the Russian energy leverage and the Arab compromise.

No, Albertans don't look to the rife insecurity looming over their own heritage.

The huckster lobbyist says look east to China.
Now, look hard, don't you glimpse your true future?

The Chinese have a special situation: China can make pipelines to install in your land. Then, with special know how, can roll those lemons out whole.

The Chinese buyers have many hands to squeeze and tease out value. Their special thirst demands it. And too, they have special law, no need for Canadian courts. So, route those pipelines south and west: Be open for business! That juice must be for the Chinese.

Canadians: Get out of the way! China needs Canada's future now, the better to leverage money America owes China.

To manage the exchange let the IMF make Canada's dollar act as a global reserve currency. Canadians won't care why. They'll be proud, like the Irish Tiger, until capital transfers leave them guardedly standing naked, with lemon-sucking face.