In the 1980s with Pierre Trudeau was trying to form a National Energy Plan, some western Canadians flouted bumper stickers reading "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark."
A couple things;
By their stubborn refusal to sign on to a Canadian-made energy plan, westerners made it so even to this day Canada is one of the few developed countries that has no National Energy Plan. Having no federal energy plan means we have no long-range plan for the use of our resources nor any secure energy utility for our citizens. We are under the thumb of the U.s. corporations that dominate our fossil fuel sector. And if they can sell for more profit outside Canada you can rest assured they will and Canadians be dam.. well, Canadians will have to take care of themselves (except we don't.)
The bumper stickers, it is said, were brought up from Texas. U.S. oil companies did not want a Canadian energy plan, and the bumper stickers and other forms of persuasion were used to stop Trudeau's attack on U.S. domination of Canada's oil resources.
An old issue of the Edmonton Bulletin foretold that the U.S. would come in and use up our resources first before they used their own, then leave us without resources while they fell back on their own. This is certainly what happened, with our conventional oil production falling since 1980 and the U.S. now unwilling and not needing to buy our remaining energy.
In 1936-37 Premier Aberhart imposed restraint on how Alberta's natural gas was being burned off with no benefit. The Turner Valley oilfield just outside Calgary was producing much natural gas along with its oil. The natural gas had little profitable use in those days so was being burned off. It is said that at night you could read a newspaper in Calgary by the light of the flares at Turner Valley.
Aberhart saw this as the waste that it was and imposed controls. The oil companies objected and supported a recall campaign against Aberhart who was their local MLA. For a short time Alberta had recall legislation where if a certain number of voters ina district objected to their MLA, he/she would have to step down.
Supporters of the old United Farmers who had lost the 1935 election joined the campaign.
Aberhart's government retroactively cancelled the recall legislation and he kept his seat. And he forced the closure of the massive natural gas flares, thus preserving that part of Canada's resources for the future and also slowing global warming as a side benefit.
That is the kind of good policy that a government engages in, but one that makes private industry lose some of its profit at least in the short term.
Profit in the short term is often corporations' sole goal. And it can be a government's as well but it does not have to be.
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