Federal Government & Politics II

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Hackslack

Liberals, taking credit for reversing their own f’d up policy…….. as per Mr Freeland on X:

“Our government is delivering relief to Atlantic Canadians, rural Canadians, and people across the country who use home heating oil. This will make life more affordable for people across Canada today—while we fight climate change at the same time.”

Wasn’t is Mr Steven Gilboe just one month ago who condescendingly claimed:

“How fair would it be for the rest of the federation if we started carving out exceptions for provinces?”

The Liberals are in complete free fall mode.

The program applies to every province under the federal backstop. It just so happens that Atlantic Canada is uniquely dependent on the most dirty fuel for home heating other than coal.

That said, it's a valid point to ask why a government that is supposedly concerned about climate change is giving consumers of the dirtiest fuel a break. If anybody should be encouraged to switch, it's these folks. The government should have put grants in place to get these people off oil as quickly as possible instead.

[rrskylar]

Where can I buy a dirty oil burning furnace, apparently the selfie sock puppet thespian PM doesn't think a carbon tax is now needed on oil burners!

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The program applies to every province under the federal backstop. It just so happens that Atlantic Canada is uniquely dependent on the most dirty fuel for home heating other than coal.

It's also dependent on coal for electricity so switching to electric heating is not as beneficial as it could be. The federal government hasn't really helped the region much when it comes to getting off coal, and it's an area they probably should help with as it just happens that NS has lots of coal but not hydro while other provinces have hydro.

Getting labeled as clueless or uncaring about the region is the #1 way your support can collapse in Atlantic Canada, and is why JT won every riding there in a past election (because it happened to Harper).

Chrystia Freeland's car-free lifestyle speech given to the residents of PEI, Canada's most rural province, was also completely clueless.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The program applies to every province under the federal backstop. It just so happens that Atlantic Canada is uniquely dependent on the most dirty fuel for home heating other than coal.

Yes this is true but the real thing is the Liberal party is uniquely depending on rural Atlantic Canada. The parts of Ontario and Quebec using Oil furnaces aren't ridings where the Liberals have a chance. Less cynically the numbers using oil furnaces is tiny so not material on our carbon output. Though same could be said for Canada and the world. Rural people in Atlantic Canada don't have central AC so the heat pump being used only for heating will require a greater subsidy. Though I'd say that money could remove more carbon elsewhere in our economy nobody really cares about that do they?

[casper]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

So you're basically clueless about the vast majority of foreign students, the bulk of whom don't go to universities, let alone for graduate programs. Like I said, you're out of touch by almost a decade.

That may very well be the case. I know a number of people that have taken this path and how critical foreign students are at these universities.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Again. You seem to have no idea how this works. Graduate from a 1 yr program and you get a 2 yr work permit. And if you get enough "experience" in your field, it allows you to apply for PR. Ironically, this rule actually favours the most generic certificates. It's much harder to get qualifying experience as an electronics technician or machine learning specialist than it is as a "business administrator".

Yes, I have limited first hand experience of how this is being abused. I have hired graduates (with BSc and MSc) post graduation and gone through the whole work permit process. However it has no first hand experience with 1 year business administrator degrees.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You keep acting like this mostly a diploma mill problem. The government's own stats show this is not. The majority of these students are going to public colleges and universities. And the majority of these crap 1-2 yr programs are run by these institutions.

The federal government is happy to facilitate this. That's why they are talking about cracking down on diploma mills. It's good distraction for easy marks like you, ready to believe this is only a small problem of a few bad apples than systemic policy failure.

I don't think it matters if the institution is provincially owned or privately owned. The issue is how do you crack down on the programs. They should be treated the same. If the entire orchard is full of bad apples then they all to rejected.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Indeed, everybody benefits but the average Canadian. Faculty and admin staff benefit from the feds. And many of them benefit through real estate investment (as Prof Mike Moffat pointed out in his criticism of faculty association voting down student housing policy proposals). Employers benefit from suppressed wages. Real estate owners benefit from buoyant demand. The average Canadian though? We get more competition for work, for a home and even for groceries.

What I am saying is we also benefit from have legitimate student visa programs and foreign students. Keep that aspect and shut down the rest.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You have been trolling at this point with how clueless you are. You can't be serious.

They aren't coming here to be TFWs. What part of path to residency do you not understand? Or do you seriously believe somebody moves half a world away to simply work for 6 months as an Uber driver? Come on now.

You don't understand my point. The student visa program should be about students coming into legitimate programs. It should not be about finding gig employees for uber.

I am pointing out this program should not be there to supply Uber with workers. Will Uber use the TFWs program? Probably not, that would mean they are legally employees instead of slave contractors. What that does is makes it clear what people are getting into.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

And that’s exactly why only 49.5% of Quebec voted to leave, last time

In NS, 36/38 MPs wanted to leave.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Yes this is true but the real thing is the Liberal party is uniquely depending on rural Atlantic Canada. The parts of Ontario and Quebec using Oil furnaces aren't ridings where the Liberals have a chance. Less cynically the numbers using oil furnaces is tiny so not material on our carbon output. Though same could be said for Canada and the world. Rural people in Atlantic Canada don't have central AC so the heat pump being used only for heating will require a greater subsidy. Though I'd say that money could remove more carbon elsewhere in our economy nobody really cares about that do they?

That said Oil furnaces have a massively larger carbon footprint than Natural Gas which most of the country uses for home heating.

If we are going to focus on de-carbonization of our buildings, some of the lowest hanging fruit is oil furnaces. The per-ton of carbon emissions is far larger to replace an oil furnace than to replace a natural gas furnace, so it makes sense to focus efforts there.

Of course the feds are offering lots of carrots to make those conversions happen, but just removed their only stick against it.. With the Carbon Tax on oil heating, it was creating a massive incentive for homeowners with oil furnaces to switch.. not so much now.

Trudeau should have kept oil furnaces in the Carbon Tax IMO, just shifted subsidies for replacement systems to make them basically free. Why keep an oil furnace if you are paying through your nose for it and the government will give you a free heat pump?

[casper]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Of course the feds are offering lots of carrots to make those conversions happen, but just removed their only stick against it.. With the Carbon Tax on oil heating, it was creating a massive incentive for homeowners with oil furnaces to switch.. not so much now.

Trudeau should have kept oil furnaces in the Carbon Tax IMO, just shifted subsidies for replacement systems to make them basically free. Why keep an oil furnace if you are paying through your nose for it and the government will give you a free heat pump?

Yes a much better idea.

[someone123]

Wouldn't the best energy policy have been to try to remove regulatory hurdles around nuclear power decades ago and then build more of that?

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by someone123

In NS, 36/38 MPs wanted to leave.

They could smell a raw deal from a mile off, and they were right!!!

[casper]

Originally Posted by someone123

Wouldn't the best energy policy have been to try to remove regulatory hurdles around nuclear power decades ago and then build more of that?

The SMRs are a new thing. Those small reactors would work in many parts of Canada.

The CANDUs that Canada traditionally would build only work in large grids. Ontario and Quebec have/had them. BC could have used a CANDU but for political reasons it instructed BC Hydro not to consider them. Nova Scotia CANDU works because it is exporting to the US.

Saskatchewan looked very closely at one in the 90s but it was to big for the size of its grid and scaling down a CANDU did not make sense. The SMR would be a different story.

There were proposals for nuclear in the oil sands to displace burning oil or natural gas to create steam. The concept was popular with the nuclear companies not so much with the oil companies.

Other than BC, I don't think it is as much regulation as it is poor business cases. SMRs change all of that.

[someone123]

Point Lepreau is in NB. I don't think that power is supplied to NS or PEI, and it supplies a bit less than half of the power in NB.

It seems pretty obvious that each province did its own thing and that the end result wasn't very efficient.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

That said Oil furnaces have a massively larger carbon footprint than Natural Gas which most of the country uses for home heating.

If we are going to focus on de-carbonization of our buildings, some of the lowest hanging fruit is oil furnaces. The per-ton of carbon emissions is far larger to replace an oil furnace than to replace a natural gas furnace, so it makes sense to focus efforts there.

Of course the feds are offering lots of carrots to make those conversions happen, but just removed their only stick against it.. With the Carbon Tax on oil heating, it was creating a massive incentive for homeowners with oil furnaces to switch.. not so much now.

Trudeau should have kept oil furnaces in the Carbon Tax IMO, just shifted subsidies for replacement systems to make them basically free. Why keep an oil furnace if you are paying through your nose for it and the government will give you a free heat pump?

The Carbon tax is really a very small part of the increase in costs for those using Heating Oil. Removing the carbon tax means the Cons can't blame it on the cost of living crisis for those heating their homes with oil. The incentive is still there but the cost doesn't make sense unless heavily subsidized. I don't think a free heat pump is anywhere near what is on offer. Oil Furnaces working with forced air require a huge refit of the whole house. Heat pumps would have to be nearly free for many in rural NS/NFLD to adopt them and even then it would take years to get them all installed. Meanwhile tons of people using natural gas or even already electricity would take advantage of the subsidy to lower their costs when economically it makes no sense. There was no politically easy answer. I don't think this will work but I guess the Atlantic MPs were ready to revolt so something needed to be done.

[casper]

Originally Posted by someone123

Point Lepreau is in NB. I don't think that power is supplied to NS or PEI, and it supplies a bit less than half of the power in NB.

It seems pretty obvious that each province did its own thing and that the end result wasn't very efficient.

Yes, New Brunswick. That comes from having local provincial utilities.

Normally supplying half your grid from a single unit is a very bad idea. If you have a reactor trip that is a major upset to the grid. It works for NB Power because of their interconnections to other grids.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

Chrystia Freeland's car-free lifestyle speech given to the residents of PEI, Canada's most rural province, was also completely clueless.

Chrystia Freeland: “Am I out of touch?”

Chrystia Freeland: “…… Nah, it’s the people of PEI who are wrong”

(Sums up pretty well the Trudeau Government’s approach on most things nowadays.)

[someone123]

Originally Posted by casper

Normally supplying half your grid from a single unit is a very bad idea. If you have a reactor trip that is a major upset to the grid. It works for NB Power because of their interconnections to other grids.

The disconnected grid issue is an engineering consideration if you're powering Hawaii. In virtually all of Canada it's a political question. There's nothing special about NB's power grid connecting to the other political entities on the same land mass.

[casper]

Originally Posted by someone123

The disconnected grid issue is an engineering consideration if you're powering Hawaii. In virtually all of Canada it's a political question. There's nothing special about NB's power grid connecting to the other political entities on the same land mass.

The feds at the time that plant was being built was offering incentives to the provinces that wanted its first nuclear reactor. NB ended up taking that offer. Quebec did as well.

You have a 600 MW reactor trip, you need to replace that instantaneously. Either within your grid or through the interconnects you have.

NB is a fairly small grid at 3,802 MW. The interconnects between NB Power with the US is 550MW.

If you compare that to Alberta with over 16,000 MW of installed capacity the interconnects with BC is 800 MW, Saskatchewan is 150 MW. They are also much larger and deal with that internally.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

Wouldn't the best energy policy have been to try to remove regulatory hurdles around nuclear power decades ago and then build more of that?

It's a nuclear industry talking point that it's regulatory hurdles that are really impairing their sales. It isn't. It's cost. Renewables are eating their lunch because they get cheaper every year and are substantially more scalable. You can build renewables as your demand scales and you can construct and get it online in months in some cases. With nuclear, just construction and commissioning will take the better part of a decade. The whole time you have carrying costs. That's the reason SMRs are taking off now. They are far more manageable financially.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's a nuclear industry talking point that it's regulatory hurdles that are really impairing their sales. It isn't. It's cost. Renewables are eating their lunch because they get cheaper every year and are substantially more scalable. You can build renewables as your demand scales and you can construct and get it online in months in some cases. With nuclear, just construction and commissioning will take the better part of a decade. The whole time you have carrying costs. That's the reason SMRs are taking off now. They are far more manageable financially.

Yeah, look no further than South Carolina spending $9B and ending up with nothing.

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/...uclear-energy/

It makes over budget projects like Site C look downright cheap.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's a nuclear industry talking point that it's regulatory hurdles that are really impairing their sales. It isn't. It's cost. Renewables are eating their lunch because they get cheaper every year and are substantially more scalable. You can build renewables as your demand scales and you can construct and get it online in months in some cases. With nuclear, just construction and commissioning will take the better part of a decade. The whole time you have carrying costs. That's the reason SMRs are taking off now. They are far more manageable financially.

Why do you think their problem is with regulatory hurdles. It's delays and costs. Renewables are only eating their lunch if you don't understand how electricity markets work. Electricity is not fungible. You can't store it except at great cost. As such an intermittent KW is worth a lot less than a base load KW. We need some large amount of stable energy and where there is not Hydro it's fossil fuels or nuclear. Higher interest rates make both nuclear and renewable business cases worse.