Home | Contacts | Classifieds | Archives | Media Kit | Email Us |
The impending closure of Shell Canada’s east-end Montreal refinery, resulting in the possible loss of hundreds of jobs, is an example of the devastating effect of the Conservative government’s fiscal policy on the Quebec and Montreal economies, says Outremont NDP MP Tom Mulcair.
“This is what happens when you don’t have an energy policy for Canada, which the Conservatives don’t, and when you don’t have an industrial policy, which the Conservatives also don’t,” he said in an interview with Nouvelles Parc Extension News.
Operated 76 years
Shell plans to convert its refinery into a depot to store and distribute gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels, which are likely to be imported from abroad. In its heyday from the early 1930s up to recent years, Shell’s east-end refinery was a 130,000 barrel-a-day operation that pumped $200 million a year into the economy of Quebec. The refining industry is currently in the midst of a setback brought on by the global recession and new fuel efficiency regulations.
According to Mulcair, the Conservative government was instrumental in the building of several oil pipelines for exporting raw crude oil to the U.S. from the Alberta tar sands. The Keystone is just one of four pipelines to the U.S. that have been built since the Conservatives have been in power, with 36 more applications for new pipelines to the U.S. pending before the National Energy Board.
Tory tar sands plan
“An independent study showed that if we were at least transforming and processing that crude in Canada into refined products we would have created 18,000 jobs in Canada,” he said. “Instead, we’re exporting our raw natural resources and we’re exporting the jobs with them.” Mulcair maintains that an existing Enbridge Inc. pipeline from Sarnia to Montreal known as the Trailbreaker would have brought crude from Alberta to Montreal for refinement, but Shell’s decision now effectively puts an end to that plan.
“The Conservatives have only one strategy developed — develop the tar sands as quickly as they can and export to the United States,” he said. “If they had been thinking for one second about the consequences of their actions they would have said, ‘okay, we’re going to make sure that part of our policy is to bring some of that petroleum to Canada, to keep it in Canada, and to have it refined here and to keep those jobs here.’ So the closing of the Shell refinery is the direct result of the Conservatives’ policy.”
Wider consequences
Mulcair claims that the Conservative government’s concentration on the Alberta tar sands has had other consequences, such as pushing the Canadian dollar higher, making it even more difficult for currently struggling industries in Quebec like forestry and manufacturing to export, because the higher the Canadian dollar the more difficult exportation becomes.
“Before the current economic crisis hit, we had already lost 400,000 jobs in Ontario and Quebec in manufacturing and forestry. These are the direct results. Shell is 500 direct jobs, but it’s also another 2,500 connected jobs to the Shell refinery. I think it is very important for people to understand the relationship between current job losses in the Montreal area in particular and Quebec in general and Conservative financial policy. The entire petrochemical industry in the Montreal area, one of the key industries here, is about to disappear because of the Conservative policy.”
Policies ‘stupid,’ says Mulcair
Despite Shell’s claim that its Montreal refinery was insufficiently viable to upgrade, Mulcair says it doesn’t make sense economically in the long-term to shut down a local refining operation. “We won’t have enough refining capacity in Quebec, because not only are we exporting our raw materials, we’re exporting our jobs, and then we’re going to import at a higher price,” he said. “The Conservative policies are so stupid. They export our raw natural resources, they create thousands of jobs in the United States to transform and refine those products, and then they ship them back to Canada where we pay a higher price.”