I do not have the research ability of others, but I do get information from those who have such ability, and I use it. My specialty has been using Hansard and reading bills to find out what is intended by our employees in the House of Commons. I also get letters from ministers such as Joe Oliver, Canada’s Resources Minister, which give me much ammunition.
 
I first heard Joe announce in the House of Commons that the Keystone XL Pipe line, all 1,000 km of it, would generate 140,000 jobs in Canada. Naturally I wrote to him asking for an explanation – in fact I wrote twice before I got a reply and in that letter he quoted a study (not a report but a study) by the Canadian Energy Research Institute, which he described as an independent think tank specializing in Canadian Energy. So thinking this would answer my questions about the jobs, I read that study. It looked good with lots of graphs and scenarios but I could find no basis or justification for any of it and it appeared to be speculation based on what the energy people wanted to hear.
 
For one thing, the study was constantly referring to “additional direct, indirect and induced jobs”.  How in the blazes does one arrive at any real figure based on that I wondered.
 
Joe Oliver also claimed in his letter:
 
The same study also found that, if approved, the oil sands products carried over the Keystone XL would support more than 140,000 additional direct, indirect and induced jobs per year in Canada, and more than $600 billion in economic activity over the next 25 years.

Well, Mr.Oliver, having been in the trucking business for many years, I can tell you that with the unloading of the ships in which the pipes will arrive from Korea, Brazil or wherever, storing and then transporting by truck to the sites, creating the access roads and the laying of the pipes would only take two thousand people at the very most; and how can we be sure that they will be Canadians working the trucks or line machines not US workers as in Kitimat at the demolition of the smelter there? So where are the other 138,000 Canadian jobs going to be? (Besides, these pipeline construction jobs are temporary, whereas the 140,000 you’re promising are to be permanent). Your suggestion seems to be that they will be somewhere in Canada under the ‘induced jobs’ description, but where? Once the pipe is laid how many Canadian workers would be left to run the pumping stations? check for inevitable leaks etc., and standby maintainence crews? So many unanswered questions, and one more: will they be Canadian Union jobs?
 
No, Mr.Oliver, I am sorry but I just cannot accept this figure of yours as real, even if you try and transfer some of those 138,000 indirect or induced jobs back to the goop sands. You know Mr.Oliver, it is rather like saying that if I post a letter to you in Ottawa, I am giving work to maybe 20 postal workers across the country which come to think of it is a heck of a deal for 55 cents.
 
Next I wondered why this jobs thing was so important. I realized a simple truth exists that no one in the Harper Government is talking about. Energy production costs have been calculated over the years by how much oil it takes to produce 1 barrel of new oil, and way back it was 1 barrel produced 100 barrels. Over the years the number of produced barrels per barrel spent has decreased and decreased to the point that in the tar sands it takes 1 barrel of oil to produce as little as 2 barrels of goop. Obviously that is not sustainable so another method of justification must be used, and in today’s climate of unemployment and desperation in Canada this promise of hypothetical jobs is perfect.
 
What we are told is that if we do not approve these disasters in the making we will not have jobs and prosperity.
 
The future of our country is held hostage to today’s urgent need for goop to export.
 
A simple message of fear and twisted mythology.
 
As many economists have pointed out, and our PM who claims to be an economist refuses to hear, every petro-state has an inflated value to their currency. We already know that we are not doing as well in the export field because our dollar is high in comparison the US dollar, and products such as processed wood are too expensive now. This is why we export way too many raw logs as we well know here in BC. This also applies to any manufacturing we may have left and to such things as wheat. Could it be that the Wheat Board had to go because the only way we could sell our wheat was at a loss to the farmers, which could not happen with the Wheat Board?

Once one realizes that the Harper Government’s measure of worth is mythical jobs, it seems that a lot of their doings make sense to them if not to us. Even the mega-jails are based on temporary jobs for the constructors and the jailers, nothing to do with the criminals who are decreasing in number, not increasing, so a new class of criminal must be created to fill those jails. Oddly enough there seem to be fewer judges appointed so no increase in jobs there. Our Justice Minister is often heard to say in the House of Commons that protecting victims is the main reason for his mega-crime bill and a priority of his government, but a simple reading of that bill shows that the only victims who are in any way protected by this bill are those who suffer as a result of terrorism. What can they do about it? Why they can sue the terrorists! Believe me it is in the bill. More work but no extra jobs for the lawyers?
 
The economy that goes along with the rhetoric about “our top priority being jobs and the economy” has little value for the Canadian people – it is all to do with corporate bottom lines, and part time jobs without benefits.

As I mentioned, I rely on the research of others who have the ability and means to find things out, and in the case of the ownership of the Tar Sands I have relied on Terry Glavin, who writes in one of his articles on the subject:
 
The $5.5-billion Enbridge pipeline project is all about sending Alberta bitumen in huge oil tankers to China. Beijing’s own state enterprises are among the project’s major backers, and Beijing has been buying up Alberta’s oil patch at such a dizzying pace lately it’s hard to keep up. In the spring of 2010, China’s state-owned Sinopec Corp. took a $4.65-billion piece of Syncrude. Then the China Investment Corporation, which is run by the Chinese Communist Party, took possession of a $1.25-billon share of Penn West Petroleum. Last summer, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation gobbled up Opti Canada for $2.34 billion. And so on.
 
Then, last month, Sinopec spent $2.2-billion to take over Daylight Energy Ltd., and last week, Petro-China, with the final push of $1.9 billion, became the owner and manager of the MacKay River oil sands project. This is what Ottawa doesn’t want you noticing.
 
The point here is that in the past financial interests in Canadian companies has been limited to minority holdings so that control stayed in Canada. But with this Harper government, the world government by corporations is the ultimate goal, and what better way for Harper to achieve this than to sell out all the Canadian companies and resources he can to foreign corporate ownership. He was stopped for a while by the Saskatchewan government with the attempted Potash Corp takeover by BHP Biliton, but he will be back for them again, count on it.
 
These international oil corporations want their goop out of Canada and onto their home turf for refining and will stop at nothing to get that done. Harper’s problem seems to be that he has to find a way to get Canadians on board with these inevitably disastrous pipeline deals, because he is still subsidizing the tar sands and their wealthy foreign owners with Canadian tax payers’ money. Thus they already own this government, Canada and the Canadian people.
 
In spite of this foreign ownership there is another problem which I have yet to hear any member of the Harper Government mention and that is the problem of FTA and NAFTA.  In those trade deals, touted as soo good for Canada, we can export as great a percentage of the production of our natural resources to the USA as we wish, but we cannot reduce that percentage amount without USA’s approval or costly compensation. We will not get that approval unless the Chinese particularly twist the US Congress’ arms to allow it. Luckily with oil we export almost all of it cheaply so we can buy back the finished product expensively, however where is there room for this huge proposed export to Asia coming from? If we double our production, even of goop, we have to double our export to the USA to maintain the same percentage.
 
The good news is that these corporate entities do not yet own our souls and spirits, all we have to do is find them again, and stand up for a new Canada based not on dirty, fake, oil and blood money but on respectful trading, real value and – dare I say? – prosperity for all.

Jeremy Arney is a concerned grandfather who ran for the Canadian Action Party in 2008 for Saanich Gulf Islands.