Canadian politics thread

[supafamous]

Leave it to the National Post (who is owned by an American company) to make this the headline on their site:



Bunch of assholes.

[westopher]

National post are basically the journalistic integrity of the national enquirer. It's just conservative opinion pieces and that's it.

[meme405]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

Build more refineries! Make Canada great again!

I've said this before and I will again:

we used to have 4 refineries here, now parkland is the only one.

Ioco (Imperial Oil) Shut down in 1994, they moved their refining to edmonton, this was because the facility was old and inneficient, but no doubt if the political and NIMBY environmentalism here in BC hadn't been so ridiculous they would have made upgrades or potentially shuttered, dismantled and built a brand new refinery.

Shellburn (Shell Oil) shut down in 1993. They turned the facility into a storage depot and moved refining operations elsewhere.

Petro Canada Refinery Shut down in 1992. This coincides with the year immediately following Brian Mulroney privatizing Petro Canada. I'm not going to get into the politics of that, but what I will say, Mulroney at the time he left office holds the record for the worst approval rating of any PM. Coincidentally Justin Trudeau sits in second on that list.

The bottom line is this: The industry knows more refining is needed here, but the political, social and environmental forces were aligned against it for so long that it has never been built.

This problem is the same as many others we face; at best the government weighs the opinion of a lot of people who have no idea what the fuck they are talking about too much. At worst they are corrupt or completely inept in their responsibilities and make decisions that personally benefit them rather than for the benefit of the constituents they serve.

If you guys dont think conversations like this happen daily/weekly you are foolish:

"Hey Mr. Premier of BC, if you make sure that new operation in BC that will stop us from profiting so much from exports to BC doesnt happen, we will make sure you get a nice board of directors seat after you leave office".

And those discussions happen down the chain, to ministers, to MLA's, etc. They even extend straight down to protestors "hey we will pay you 100k to go stand outside the gates of XXX company and make it seem like you think they are evil because they damage the environment you love".

And the fucking hippies in BC especially fell for shit like that head over heels. Like a bunch of idiots, and now we've ended up here. Full circle, realizing "hey we should really make some of the shit we consume ourselves, otherwise these other companies keep fucking us".

[Harvey Specter]

Doesn't Conrad Black write op-eds for the National Post?

And speaking of Canadians, where the fuck is Kevin O'Leary? Where's Wayne Gretzky? Bunch of fucking sellouts. I hope Canadians remember who stood up for Canada.

[westopher]

And Rex Murphy until he died. So much for pro life Rex.

[Traum]

Originally Posted by Harvey Specter

And speaking of Canadians, where the fuck is Kevin O'Leary? Where's Wayne Gretzky? Bunch of fucking sellouts. I hope Canadians remember who stood up for Canada.

Now that you mentioned O'Leary, I am at least marginally more approving of Danielle Smith's most recent stance towards the Trump tariffs. Don't get me wrong -- she is still on my vile persons list, and her social media announcement regarding the Trump tariffs still carries evident traces of her Alberta-first attitude. But at least she has not completely forgotten that she is Canadian as well, and I will give her a pass for that (for now).

[supafamous]

Fuck Gretzky.

Tobi Lutke, the founder of Shopify has "outed" himself by pandering to Trump's tariffs and believing the lies around it being a border security thing:

Fuck him too.

Twitter X

[SkinnyPupp]

They are traitors to the country really

[Harvey Specter]

Originally Posted by supafamous

Fuck Gretzky.

Tobi Lutke, the founder of Shopify has "outed" himself by pandering to Trump's tariffs and believing the lies around it being a border security thing:

Fuck him too.

https://x.com/tobi/status/1885906286950363546

It always amuses me to hear an immigrant telling the world what Canadians really want and support. And it speaks volumes that he's reposting a Rebel News clip, the same Rebel News that was shamefully selling Trump merch the day he announced the tariffs.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by meme405

I've said this before and I will again:

we used to have 4 refineries here, now parkland is the only one.

The bottom line is this: The industry knows more refining is needed here, but the political, social and environmental forces were aligned against it for so long that it has never been built.

This is a bit of a misrepresentation of the reality of the fossil fuel industry. Refining capacity is as high as its ever been (https://www.statista.com/statistics/...for-crude-oil/) but there's a big gap between what's usable and what's available - there's a lot of capacity that isn't being used for a variety of reasons (age, location, politics). In the US, they've actually decreased capacity in the last few years even as oil production keeps going up.

The fossil fuel industry would be happy to refine more oil as they are a for profit business but it's in the interest of society to not continue to refine so much oil cause, you know, climate change. In addition, building net new refineries is really expensive and with the continued move to renewables the ROI for building a new refinery is terrible - unless there's a region that lacks critical infrastructure it's not going to happen.

This is why the US, the world's biggest producer of oil, is dependent on Canadian oil. Their refineries can process Canada's crude but not their own so instead of retrofitting their refineries or building new ones they prefer the cheaper approach of just buying Canadian oil and shipping theirs out. The cost of retrofitting their refineries or building new ones is not worth it.

Energy independence, like food security, is a political decision and not a financial one - if you have good relations with your neighbours or participate in the global marketplace you don't have to have energy independence and, in fact, it's hugely expensive to have it (as the US is finding out).

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Harvey Specter

It always amuses me to hear an immigrant telling the world what Canadians really want and support. And it speaks volumes that he's reposting a Rebel News clip, the same Rebel News that was shamefully selling Trump merch the day he announced the tariffs.

FWIW, Tobi is the one who was ok with Shopify allowing Nazis to sell merchandise on their platform - he called it a freedom of speech issue. As he's also German I'm sure he knows how to make the proper salute when he sees Elon next.

[Harvey Specter]

Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp

They are traitors to the country really

I feel like the next battle will be against billionaires because they've finally shown their true colours. They're not the leftist tech bros they've portrayed themselves as because in reality, their only goal is to consolidate power and control the masses. There's a reason why so many people celebrated what Luigi Mangione did. It's alarming, but this is what happens when people are pushed to their limits.

[BIC_BAWS]

Quote pulled from Trump thread, posted here because I don't want any more exposure on American politics.

Originally Posted by Harvey Specter

Again, it’s a massive wake up call for us as a country: we’re on our own and need to focus on ourselves while staying unified.

100%. We need to keep the momentum going by supporting in our local (or national) economy, being vocal about the very evident need to expand our trade networks globally (outside of NA), and demand our politicians to focus on trade, innovation, and foreign investment/export markets.

It's outright stupid to say, but the threat of the tariff needs to stay as a real ongoing concern. If it's not this administration, it'll be the next. If Canada doesn't step it up, we'll have to play an even longer catch up game and our options will continue to be limited. Regardless of which party is in power in Canada, we'll continue to be fucked if we don't adapt and push forward.

In the last few days, it felt like Canada was actually united for once. It's been a long time since I felt that Canadian pride. I usually stay out of politics chatter because it's too much "left-bias" or "right-bias" when all we should really be debating is the platform and plans on how it'll be done.

I'm frustrated that Canadians seem to care more about American politics - something that we have no control over or really affects us (usually). The upside to this tariff was that people actually started talking about Canadian politics instead. Maybe I'm just ignorant and the topic of American politics is like sports, a pastime, but I think more Canadians need to starting making conscious decisions about who we elect and why we elect them.

[Hondaracer]

How many times do we have to say “this will be the time”

We never learn.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Trump_tariffs

Like.. you needed it to happen twice before you came to your senses? lol ffs..

Don’t hold your breath on anyone fixing this. All the warning signs were there, everyone was just in back rooms crossing their fingers Trump wouldn’t get back in.

For my own personal sake and that of friends and family I hope there will be a resolution that doesn’t take more money out of my pockets (in the form of tariffs etc. not Canadian taxes etc) but building a long term plan to build out Canada to a more independent nation where we wouldn’t be intimidated by threats like
These seems incredibly optimistic.

[meme405]

Originally Posted by supafamous

This is a bit of a misrepresentation of the reality of the fossil fuel industry. Refining capacity is as high as its ever been (https://www.statista.com/statistics/...for-crude-oil/) but there's a big gap between what's usable and what's available - there's a lot of capacity that isn't being used for a variety of reasons (age, location, politics). In the US, they've actually decreased capacity in the last few years even as oil production keeps going up.

The fossil fuel industry would be happy to refine more oil as they are a for profit business but it's in the interest of society to not continue to refine so much oil cause, you know, climate change. In addition, building net new refineries is really expensive and with the continued move to renewables the ROI for building a new refinery is terrible - unless there's a region that lacks critical infrastructure it's not going to happen.

This is why the US, the world's biggest producer of oil, is dependent on Canadian oil. Their refineries can process Canada's crude but not their own so instead of retrofitting their refineries or building new ones they prefer the cheaper approach of just buying Canadian oil and shipping theirs out. The cost of retrofitting their refineries or building new ones is not worth it.

Energy independence, like food security, is a political decision and not a financial one - if you have good relations with your neighbours or participate in the global marketplace you don't have to have energy independence and, in fact, it's hugely expensive to have it (as the US is finding out).

Exactly what have I misrepresented?

The point of my post was that here in Canada we have consistently shuttered our refineries, and there has been zero appetite politically or socially to have companies reinvesting in that infrastructure. Instead we favoured exporting our crude elsewhere for refining, and of course our "friends" south of the border gobble it up. They get to buy our product refine it, keep what they need and sell back to us the excess. All the while generating jobs and profits.

Energy independence doesn't have to be a political decision, but what makes it a political one is when politicians shit on and restrict the companies trying to build shit here. Just look at transmountain, a project that a private corporation was willing to build, and the public went so buck wild on it, protested the fuck out of it, and the gov't sat by idly letting it happen, until the company said fuck it, we will take our investment money where they actually welcome us. Then the gov't had to buy the project cause it was necessary and they knew it, and try to build it themselves. Which of course having ZERO business experience doing, they fucked it to death and it cost several times what it was supposed to in the first place. The issue is we had a politician for the last 10 years, who had zero backbone, he had no interest in stepping on anyone's toes, and he pandered to all the dumbasses trying to remain popular. Well i'd much rather a politician that has the fucking balls to once in awhile stand up and say shit how it is, even if they know that will piss a few people off. This is exactly half the reason trump has made it so far, this style of politics speaks to a lot of people, cause they are tired of these career politicians just trying to eek out enough years so they can retire to Board of Director positions in the companies they enriched during their tenure.

You dont think Shell would or Syncrude would rather refine closer to where the crude is being produced, rather than shipping it an additional several thousand kilometers to do the same thing? The issue is when they did have refineries up here, they had idiot environmentalists protesting their facilities outside their gates daily, and the gov't allowed the environmentalists to perpetuate that fear with no repercussions and no intervention until it became something that everyone believed in.

I'm not saying that today it makes sense to start building a refinery, but in the early 90's if we hadn't been stupid, it definitely would have.

Just an FYI the same thing happened to smelters here in Canada, which is why most minerals we mine (save for a few examples) are shipped overseas as concentrate to be smelted there. Because Canada deemed it too dirty to do here and the government stopped approving projects that incorporated smelting operations in Canada.

I haven't mis-represented anything.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by meme405

Exactly what have I misrepresented?

You said:

Originally Posted by meme405

The bottom line is this: The industry knows more refining is needed here, but the political, social and environmental forces were aligned against it for so long that it has never been built.

I pointed out that while your first point is true that it's also true that, financially it hasn't made sense for oil companies to invest in new refineries in NA even excluding political reasons.

Originally Posted by meme405

Energy independence doesn't have to be a political decision, but what makes it a political one is when politicians shit on and restrict the companies trying to build shit here.

I think you're vastly oversimplifying a complex problem that is complex enough that most citizens don't care to or are unable to understand and that politicians are not able or afraid to walk us through it.

Canada is a highly resource rich country and it would be highly profitable for us to extract those resources and process them on shore - it would create a lot of jobs and a lot of revenue for the government if they did it. However, it would be environmentally costly (HUGELY costly) to do that and we want to meet our climate commitments (and climate change is a real problem) and retain as much of the beauty of our country as possible (for more than aesthetic reasons).

We've done a halfway response to this - we've continued to boost oil production (triple what it was in 1989) and continued to extract resources. We profit from this but we then offshore the additional environment costs by letting other countries process these resources.

There are consequences to what you think we should have done (drill, drill, drill) just as there are to do the opposite - neither is inherently a wrong opinion - we want more jobs and we more money but we also don't want to end the world and destroy the environment.

The Site C dam decision by John Horgan and explanation is one of the few times I could cite where it felt the discussion actually had nuance. On one hand we're destroying some very pristine (if very remote) land but we need power.

Originally Posted by meme405

here, they had idiot environmentalists protesting their facilities outside their gates daily, and the gov't allowed the environmentalists to perpetuate that fear with no repercussions and no intervention until it became something that everyone believed in.

You make it sound like the environmentalists are winning when they're not. Their victories are minor - we've tripled oil production and have seen climate get dramatically worse over the years. The oil sands continues to pour toxins into the Athabasca river with nearly no consequences.

Originally Posted by meme405

I'm not saying that today it makes sense to start building a refinery, but in the early 90's if we hadn't been stupid, it definitely would have.

I'd say it would have been dumber to build a refinery back then compared to the last 10 years. The oil sands didn't pick up till the 2000s when technology made it somewhat cost effective to extract oil and even then oil prices fluctuated so much in the early 2000s that it was often unprofitable to extract oil. In addition in the 90s we likely would not have built the type of refinery that we need today (for heavy crude).

[Hondaracer]

https://vancouversun.com/news/birth-...nd-more-canada

Charging 100k to facilitate birth tourism and Canadian citizenships in Canada? lol

Fucking get rid of these people, are you kidding me

[Hondaracer]

Lots of goodies, the precedent must be awesome for this one..

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2025/0...r-old-charged/

Guy is stabbed multiple times in an unprovoked random assault, guy is lucky to be alive looking at this scars, and the perp is released THE SAME DAY as the stabbing

[donk.]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

https://vancouversun.com/news/birth-...nd-more-canada

Charging 100k to facilitate birth tourism and Canadian citizenships in Canada? lol

Fucking get rid of these people, are you kidding me

More like send the woman "hosting" this service out of the country

And ban anyone 7-9 months preg from flying in, you wanted a child, have it in your own country

[unit]

wow, i always thought birth tourism operators were a hush hush sort of thing.

[spoon.ek9]

Anything that can generate profits will be exploited, I guess that's to be expected. But yes, I didn't know there were legitimately whole ass businesses dedicated to running such things. Until it's made to be illegal, people will keep doing this. Definitely something the gov't should look into at the federal level.

[Hondaracer]

The fact those bozos were willing to do an interview and plaster their face on the article goes to show A) how oblivious people like that are to reality and B) how freely and openly the system is being abused.

[JDMDreams]

Inflation is gonna go back up, gas will be $2+, we finally gonna build a refinery?

[Dbone]

VERB THE NOUN!!!



Hey everyone, I have a great idea. Let's do a "War on Drugs". Who's with me?

[Hondaracer]

So you’re opposed to locking up people with large quantities of fentanyl?