Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Over a Barrel
Exiting from NAFTA's proportionality clause
The report describes how NAFTA limits Canada's options for managing its energy future and recommends options for regaining Canadian energy security and sovereignty.
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Gordon Laxer
Gordon Laxer is the Director of Parkland Institute, a progressive, non-corporate, Alberta research network that studies public policy alternatives. He has been a political economist in the Sociology Department at the University of Alberta since 1982. He is principal investigator for a five-year, $1.8 million research project, Neo-liberal Globalism and its Challengers: Reclaiming the Commons in the Semi-Periphery: Canada, Mexico, Australia and Norway, principally funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). He is the author of a forthcoming book, Freezing in the Dark: Oil Independence for Canada.
Media releases
January 27, 2012
Harper must get fired up to deal with fuel shortage
Lack of contingency plans for likely international oil crisis will leave Canada in the cold
Smallpox is a scary disease. It kills a fifth of those infected, and scars and blinds many survivors. Canada has been smallpox free since 1962 and the world since 1977. But, Canada has a smallpox contingency plan. So does Britain. The chances of a smallpox outbreak are remote, but I am happy to pay taxes so Canada can employ people to fight its return. That’s what governments are for. read more »
July 27, 2011
What in tar-nation?
There’s less than meets the eye to Alberta’s surprising about-face on a national energy strategy.
I never thought I’d see the day when the words “national,” “energy” and “strategy” would be strung together and promoted by the Alberta government. For 30 years, Pierre Trudeau’s 1980 National Energy Program (NEP) had been recurrently trotted out by Alberta premiers and Calgary’s oilpatch, strung up, and ritualistically pummelled. read more »
March 25, 2009
Yesterday’s fuel, yesterday’s deal
Petro-Canada, taken over by Suncor, pushes to deliver more fossil fuels when the world is moving to renewables
Suncor’s proposed buyout of Petro-Canada is being touted as a match made in Canada to create a national champion that will kick-start the oil sands. Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal bet that Pierre Trudeau’s ghost was smirking somewhere to see his dream realized. Should advocates of Canadian energy security, domestic control and transitioning to a conserver society throw confetti at the corporate wedding? read more »
October 10, 2008
Eastern Canada vulnerable to oil shortages
New Report Calls for Canada to Set Up Strategic Petroleum Reserves
Canada is currently the most vulnerable country in the industrial world to short-term oil supply crises, and we need to establish strategic petroleum reserves to remedy the problem. This is the key finding of a report released today by Alberta’s Parkland Institute in conjunction with the Polaris Institute. read more »
Parkland research
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Freezing in the Dark
Why Canada Needs Strategic Petroleum Reserves
Canada is currently the most vulnerable country in the industrial world to short-term oil supply crises, and we need to establish strategic petroleum reserves to remedy the problem. This is the key finding of a report released today by Alberta’s Parkland Institute in conjunction with the Polaris Institute.
Recent Parkland Post stories
Bitten by the deal that once fed us
Canadians should hope for an Obama presidency and the reopening of NAFTA
John McCain's visit to Canada on Friday was a preview of just how important the issue of renegotiating the North American free-trade agreement will be in this fall's U.S. presidential election.The SPP’s prospects are iffy with leaders short on political capital
Canadian bureaucrats are stuck in continentalist thinking, assuming that Canada has unlimited oil and gas surpluses to export
For five years, critics have warned of a secretive process to integrate Canada and Mexico into a greater America. Call it the big idea, harmonization or annexation; call it the Waco SPP process. No matter. Most Canadians haven't heard of it. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which was formally started in Waco, Texas, by the three "Amigo" governments of North America in March 2005, hasn't registered with the public. But that is bound to change.top of page