In the News April 12
Extent of Integration of Canadian Energy Sector
Within U.S. Economy
Dangers Posed by “North American Energy Security Network”
Protest in Vancouver, April 9, 2022, against Transmountain pipeline expansion, which endangers the environment and does not have the consent of the Indigenous peoples. The expanded pipeline would increase the supply of oil to refineries in Washington State and California to fuel U.S. war machine
Canada’s energy sector is integrated into the U.S. economy, which for all intents and purposes is a war economy. Recent reports not only reveal the extent of this integration but revel in it as something indispensable to our lives and economy and denounce any opposition to expansion of this integration.
A report by the Canadian Energy Centre (CEC), an Alberta government corporation, says, “A strong American oil and gas industry is a critical element of economic prosperity and the North American energy security network linking Canada, the United States, and Mexico.” They fail to point out that this “strong American oil and gas industry is a critical element” not in our joint prosperity but as a pillar of the U.S. economy and its gigantic aggressive military spread throughout the world that could not function without Canadian oil and gas.
The CEC also analyzes the contributions of the Canadian crude oil sector to the U.S. petroleum refineries. It emphasizes for its own purposes the importance of the U.S. refineries to the overall U.S. economy and the enormous contribution of Canadian feedstock to U.S. refinery production. The report quotes a U.S. source that does not mince words expressing the importance of the domestic U.S. refining capacity to the overall economy. It writes, “America’s refiners are a strategic asset for the United States and maintaining a viable domestic refining industry is critical to the nation’s economic security. Domestic refineries are competing directly with petroleum product imports. Because the refining industry operates on a global basis, America faces the choice of either manufacturing these products at home or importing them from other countries. U.S. refinery closures would result in domestic job losses and lower government revenue in the form of taxes. It would also result in a greater reliance on foreign refineries.”
It does not mention or question why this refining could not be done in Canada, at least to a greater extent than now, with the subsequent obvious benefits falling to the Canadian economy. The CEC also does not delve into the fact that private ownership of parts of the economy has degenerated into control by a small class of competing supranational oligarchs who demand the economy guarantee maximum private profit for them without consideration of the well-being of the people, the economy or natural environment. The fractured economy cannot mobilize the enormous potential of industrial mass production which requires overall cooperation with an aim to serve the people and not separate private oligarchs whose control leads inevitably into economic crises and war.
The U.S. war economy is based on the exploitation of workers and resources in the United States and around the globe, including Canada. This exploitation is sustained by U.S. military and police forces of overwhelming power, U.S. control of international financial and civil society organizations, and ideological subversion promoting and declaring the U.S. “way of life,” liberal democracy and imperialist ideology as indispensable and the pinnacle of human achievement. This subversion of the people’s own thinking is incessant, having fashioned a dominant ideological crib. To emerge from this historical crib requires conscious participation of individuals in acts of finding out, which places action to change the world and defend the people’s rights and claims in the first place and understanding in the service of action.
The U.S. military is deployed in hundreds of bases and naval forces throughout the globe and exercises brutal suppression of any struggle against U.S. hegemony. Within the United States the police are militarized, serving the rule of the oligarchy with impunity. Canada is embroiled in the U.S. military activity not only through the integration of the economy into the U.S. war economy but directly by participating in the aggressive NATO and NORAD military pacts and agreeing to march in lockstep with U.S. commands.
The people have long-since demanded a new pro-social direction for the economy. They need to change its current aim so that it benefits the people and their well-being and contributes to the humanization of the natural and social environment, not their degradation and destruction.
(Photo: WF, Wilderness Committee)
Workers’ Forum, posted April 12, 2022.
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