Oil Industry bail-out? Make it work for Canada’s Future.

Guest blog by Sue Craig.

We are hearing about a possible big bail-out of the oil industry.

I find it heartening that some members of the federal Liberal caucus have dared to question the agenda of Big Oil without being ostracized. Perhaps this means government is willing to listen to the following.

I urge the government to do what U.S. President Obama should have done in the big financial meltdown, what Canada ought to have done in the auto industry bailout:

• Provide a bailout but take an equity position and corresponding membership on the boards of directors in the industry.

and then:

• Use the bailout funds to support workers in transition to sustainable jobs while at the same time winding down the industry in the public interest.
• Reopen a few mothballed refineries and ensure that an ever-dwindling supply of oil is refined in Canada and used here (creating jobs, albeit for maybe only 20 years or so) as we move to electric transportation powered by renewable energy.

Quite seriously, the oil industry really ought to pay us for the unbelievable damage it has done to our environment while sucking out the resources.

We know government is ultimately going to pay for its short-sightedness in subsidizing (for years) an industry that was rendering our planet uninhabitable. We are going to pay. So let’s face the music now, at a time when Canadians are showing tremendous resilience and willingness to pull together in the face of emergency.

I think if the government were to take the oil industry before a truly impartial international tribunal of business and environmental experts, we would be told we are entitled to repossess the industry’s assets altogether — in other words, nationalize it — without further compensation to the corporate interests that own the industry. But that could happen retroactively: that is, after we have employed the leverage we currently have with an oil industry that is on its knees, although not, unfortunately, in humility.

About the author

Sue Craig is a long-time activist in politics, the union movement and the environmental movement. She is a retired member of the Ontario Public Service and is a former journalist.